We are just a group of retired spooks that discuss things that you’ll not find anywhere else. It makes us unique. Take a look around. Learn a thing or two.
When I was married to my first wife, she told me a story about what happened when her grandmother died. Once this 90-something woman died, the “children” all went over to her old house “on the hill” and started probate on the belongings. And there they discovered that there was a very large, and very heavy bureau that had been against the one wall for as long as anyone could remember. And when they emptied the bureau, and moved the heavy massive piece away, they discovered a locked door.
When they opened it, they found a child’s bedroom dating from the 1920’s all perfectly preserved.
Apparently, my wife’s oldest uncle told the story that when he was five years old, he and his older brother, who was six went out playing on the frozen river, and the older brother fell into the ice and died. Since he was so young at the time, he had forgotten about the older brother and the event, but the grandmother simply walled up the room. Closed the blinds, shut the drapes and never spoke of the lost son ever again.
Inside was the room just as the boy had left it. With clothing on the floor, an unmade bed. Toys about, and other things of that period such as books, cast metal toys, an an old baseball mitt and bat.
It’s a fascinating story, and one that comes up time and time again over the years.
Time capsules are purposely built to contain interesting and unique items meant to be uncovered at a predetermined date in the future. This can often be a century or more after the capsule is buried.
Unintentional time capsules are something else altogether as they are far rarer and only appear when least expected. These are places and items lost for a time. But when they are revealed, they showcase what life was like in the past.
Here we can look at some other time capsules as we explore this interesting subject.
Lost Purse From 1957 Discovered In 2019
In 1957, a young woman named Patti Rumfola was attending Hoover High School in Ohio when something terrible happened: She lost her purse. That stroke of bad luck for Rumfola turned into an incredible discovery in 2019 when her handbag was finally found by a custodian.
Unfortunately, it was a bit too late for Rumfola as she had passed away in 2013 at age 71. Still, the purse was found, and with some Internet sleuthing, the original owner was identified. The handbag was given to one of her daughters, who had the opportunity to peek into her mother’s life from 62 years in the past.[1]
The purse, which had fallen behind some lockers, ultimately became an unintentional time capsule filled with the kinds of items you might expect to find in a young girl’s handbag in 1957. There were several pristine tickets to her school’s football games, a couple of library cards, a photograph of one of her friends, a wallet, and a small amount of change. Each of her five children kept a penny from the purse to remember their mother.
The Town Of Bodie, California
Shortly before the US Civil War broke out, gold was discovered east of the Sierra Nevada mountains. By the late 1870s, the site had grown to become a boomtown called Bodie with some 10,000 residents. By 1915, the gold was gone, and people had to leave the town for good.
Bodie became an unintentional time capsule because it’s more than 2,500 meters (8,300 ft) above sea level. In the early 20th century, it wasn’t easy to get in and out of the little town. As a result, the residents left most of their possessions there as it was too expensive to have them hauled over miles of mountain trails.
In 1962, California State Parks stepped in to establish the ghost town as Bodie State Historic Park. It is preserved in an arrested state, so nothing is disturbed except for the occasional repair to ensure that a wall or roof remains intact.
The place is exactly what people envision a ghost town to be. But more than that, it’s a glimpse back in time to the Old West without the kitschy tourist traps found in places like Tombstone.[2]
Completely Intact Shoe Store Rediscovered After Half A Century
From the 1940s to the 1960s, the Fashion Shoe Shop stood as a staple mom-and-pop store. But it eventually shut down. Years later, it was bequeathed to a man who went by to see what the property looked like. He found a shoe store that had been shuttered several decades earlier.
The shop was something of a step back in time as the shoe store looked just as it had when the doors were locked years earlier. Instead of cleaning out an abandoned space, the new owner found a treasure in perfectly preserved vintage shoes. As the shoes were still inside their boxes, they were preserved without damage from dust, mold, or anything else.[3]
The time capsule was also filled with fashion from previous eras. In such well-preserved conditions, the items were worth quite a lot of money. In addition, the shop had a Victrola Credenza Talking Machine full of vintage records, a vintage stove, and more incredible finds from 40 years ago when the shop was closed.
Abandoned Home In Ontario Revealed A Link To The Past
Not every abandoned property is a decaying mess that people should avoid. Occasionally, a place will turn up something surprising, which is exactly what happened when a home in Ontario, Canada, was discovered by an urban explorer in 2013.
The home wasn’t in the best shape. But looking past the “usual smell of decay and years of abandonment” revealed a hidden gem showcasing how people lived in the 1960s when the property was abandoned.
Inside the home was a plethora of items from the 1960s and earlier, including several musical instruments, a shaving kit, a shoeshine polish kit, a cache of vinyl albums, cartons of food far beyond their expiration dates, furniture, books, clocks, televisions, a gramophone, a piano, jewelry, and two complete sets of polished silverware, which are worth their weight in . . . well, silver.
It’s unclear why the home was abandoned with everything left inside. But it helps to paint a picture of the people who lived there more than 50 years before the property was rediscovered.[4]
A Shop Boarded Up For 30 Years In Lancashire
Typically, when a shop goes out of business, its contents are sold, the building is vacated, and then it’s taken over by someone else. But something that seldom happens turned up in Accrington, Lancashire, in October 2008.
As builders were working in the area, they uncovered a shop that had been boarded up for at least 30 years. Instead of a decrepit empty space, they found a perfectly preserved corner shop and ice cream parlor. It was filled with items from the shop’s earliest days in the 1920s to products dating to the early 1970s.[5]
These included cigarette advertisements from the 1950s, a magazine that went through the day-by-day happenings of then Princess Elizabeth’s tour of Australia in 1938, old-fashioned sweet jars, and ice cream spoons. The original owners had left the property over 30 years earlier without removing the contents.
Paperwork found within the shop dated back more than 80 years. It indicated that the establishment had belonged to the Boyd family for several generations. The building was renovated, but the items were preserved by the developer.
A Victorian-Era Pharmacy Hidden For 80 Years In Somerset Village
In the early 1800s, John Wellington opened a chemist shop at South Petherton, Somerset. He also sold groceries. After John’s passing in 1845, the shop stayed in his family for more than four decades. Then it was sold to W.C. White in 1887.
White operated the shop’s chemist side until he died in 1909. Then his son and heir, Charles White, continued with the grocery business only. Charles wasn’t qualified to dispense medications, so the store’s chemist side was sealed behind a locked door.
Despite having several other owners, it remained that way until 1987. That year, the shop was sold and the locked door was finally opened. Inside was the chemist shop precisely as it had looked when it was sealed 78 years earlier.
The Victorian-era pharmacy was purchased in its entirety by Flambards Theme Park in Cornwall. The shop was moved and reestablished exactly as it had looked nearly a century before. Some items didn’t make the transition—but not because they were damaged.
Certain chemicals were now considered dangerous and deadly. They were confiscated by the British Home Office. But everything else has been perfectly maintained and preserved.[6]
A Long-Forgotten Closet Revealed A Treasure Trove Of Civil War Artifacts
In 2010, the former Carnegie Library in San Antonio, Texas, was undergoing some renovations when something unexpected turned up. The workers found a closet that had been walled up in the early 1950s. Inside, they discovered a treasure trove of artifacts dating back to the US Civil War.
More than 200 items were found in the closet. Although most were from the Civil War era, the oldest was a priceless copy of the 1615 King James Bible printed in London. Beth Graham, a spokesperson for the library system, described it as “in astoundingly good shape for being nearly 400 years old.”[7]
At least one document was dated 1861. According to Graham, another was “a proclamation by the Governor of New Mexico calling up the militia to repel Confederate raiders coming into the territory from Texas.”
Several magazines were dated 1952, which suggests that the closet was walled up before the building housed the Hertzberg Circus Museum in the late 1960s. The library staff cataloged the items and put them on display at the San Antonio Public Library.
Parisian Apartment Left Untouched For 70 Years Discovered In 2010
In 1942, as the Nazis invaded Paris, playwright Solange Beaugiron, the granddaughter of Madame Marthe de Florian, fled the city. Beaugiron left behind her apartment but continued to pay the rent until her death at age 91, almost 70 years later.
It is believed that Beaugiron didn’t return at all between 1942 and her death in 2010. So the apartment remained closed. Initially Marthe de Florian’s home, it was filled with opulent furniture and paintings. All of them remained untouched.[8]
The apartment was finally opened in 2010. Although it was an amazing unintentional time capsule of 1940s Parisian life, it also contained many valuable artifacts. One such item was a portrait of de Florian by Giovanni Boldini. It sold at auction for €3 million, a record for the artist.
Other paintings by famous artists, ornate furniture, a piano, a phonograph, and much more were uncovered in the apartment. Somehow, the place survived World War II without a scratch as did everything sealed inside.
Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Chemistry Lab Found Hidden Behind Wall
Conservators working at the University of Virginia’s Rotunda have inadvertently uncovered a chemical hearth designed by Thomas Jefferson. The discovery is offering fresh insights into how chemistry was taught over 200 years ago.
The iconic Rotunda, constructed in 1826, is located on The Lawn of the original grounds of the University of Virginia and is currently undergoing renovations. Inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, Thomas Jefferson designed it to symbolize the “authority of nature and power of reason” and the separation of church and education.
Back in 1895, a fire destroyed much of the building’s interior. But during the 1850s, the chemical hearth—part of an early chemistry classroom—was sealed in one of the lower-floor walls of the Rotunda, which protected it from the fire. Recently, while preparing for the current renovations, workers examining the cavities in the walls unexpectedly discovered the lost chemistry hearth.
Back in Jefferson’s day, chemistry was taught on the Rotunda’s bottom floor. His collaborator, professor of natural history John Emmet, taught the classes. UVA Todayexplains how it worked:
The chemical hearth was built as a semi-circular niche in the north end of the Lower East Oval Room. Two fireboxes provided heat (one burning wood for fuel, the other burning coal), underground brick tunnels fed fresh air to fireboxes and workstations, and flues carried away the fumes and smoke. Students worked at five workstations cut into stone countertops.Brian Hogg, senior historic preservation planner in the Office of the Architect for the University, said the chemical hearth may have been for Emmet’s use; the students may have had portable hearths with which they conducted experiments.“Back then, the different experiments would get different levels of heat from different sources,” said Jody Lahendro, a supervisory historic preservation architect for U.Va.’sFacilities Management. “For some, they would put the heat source under a layer of sand to more evenly disperse and temper the heat.”
According to Hogg, this may be the oldest intact example of early chemical education in the United States.
The University of Virginia will put the chemical hearth on display once renovations are complete.
Now some other stuff…
All of this stuff is interesting and a curiosity. There is no question about that. But what about today? What about your life now? What about things, people, places, food, friends, drink, pets and other interests? Well…
…lucky for you all, I have some videos that I am gonna deposit here for your enjoyment. And as you look at them remember that those relics that you read about are from another person’s time; another person’s life. But this time; this life, is yours NOW.
Make it a good one.
Please contribute. Don’t disparage.
Check out this guy who used to ice skate when he was in elementary school, and then life carried him away. Now, for the first time in 50 years, he tries to ice skate again. Not so easy is it? video
Remember!
You are not your age. You are not your color, nationality, your style, your wealth. You are not your job. You are not your career or your education. You are very unique and you are very, very special.
Never forget that.
Here’s a video where a middle-school student discovers what her dad does for a living. It’s a bit of a shock, but you know what…? It doesn’t matter. video.
What the world needs now is more understanding; more humanity; and more kindness. Help others. Be the Rufus. Show understanding, compassion and kindness. Help others. And when someone is in need, help them.
Do not be afraid to volunteer. You can join the volunteer fire department, be an auxiliary in the police. Help in the local community. Volunteer at the food pantry. Go to the local humane society and just volunteer. Be part of the community. Smile. Make friends.
According to modern accepted history, prior to the ability to write, most humans were very, very primitive. While they might have been able to farm, and perhaps fabricate some clothes from animal skins, that was the full extent of human progress. And most historians place this date around 5,000 years ago, with some squabbling that it might be as early as 9,000 years ago.
The Stone Age marks a period of prehistory in which humans used primitive stone tools. Lasting roughly 2.5 million years, the Stone Age ended around 5,000 years ago when humans in the Near East began working with metal and making tools and weapons from bronze.
During the Stone Age, humans shared the planet with a number of now-extinct hominin relatives, including Neanderthals and Denisovans.
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The idea that Neanderthals were able to do anything besides one or two carvings on mammoth tusks, and using bones as hammers, is considered ludicrous.
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And when they pretty much were dying out, historians believe that that was the period of time when the use of stone tools started to make way for pottery, and perhaps roughly sewn clothing.
The oldest pottery known was found at an archaeological site in Japan. Fragments of clay containers used in food preparation at the site may be up to 16,500 years old.
Stone Age food varied over time and from region to region, but included the foods typical of hunter gatherers: meats, fish, eggs, grasses, tubers, fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts.
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But that’s pretty much the extent of it all. But, then we have an OOPART. A thing that should not exist. A thing or an item that shakes the very foundation that historians have created for the lineage of man.
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How? Well, these are the OLDEST dates that people are willing to attribute to humans…
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Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. They developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago.
The first modern humans began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago.
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Here we talk about this.
Enigmatic Ancient Wheel: The 300-Million-Year-Old Wheel and Anomalous Ancient Tracks Across the World
The following article is extracted from The Myth Of Man by J.P. Robinson. All credit to the author, and please kindly note that it was edited to fit this venue. Along with some healthy MM additions.
In 2008, a curious find was discovered down a coal mine in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
As it could not be safely or successfully cut out due to the nature of the sandstone in which it was embedded, the mysterious artifact looking much like an ancient wheel remains in situ down the mine.
A fossilized (previously) wooden wheel has been unearthed in a mine in Eastern Europe / Russia. It is encased in rock (sandstone) that is 300 million years old.
Whilst drilling the coal coking stratum named J3 ‘Sukhodolsky’ at a depth of 900 meters (2952.76 feet) from the surface, workers were surprised to find what appears to be the imprint of a wheel above them in the sandstone roof of the tunnel that they had just excavated.
Thankfully, photographs of the unusual imprint were taken by the Deputy Chief V.V. Kruzhilin and shared with the mine foreman S. Kasatkin, who brought news of the find to light.
Without being able to further explore the site and inspect the imprint at close hand, we are left with only the photographs as evidence of their existence (there was more than one imprint) and the word of a group of Ukrainian miners.
Discovering the Wheel
Without being able to definitively date the strata in which the fossilized wheel print was found, it has been noted that the Rostov region surrounding Donetsk is situated upon Carboniferous rock aged between 360-300 million years ago.
As well as the widely distributed coking coals have derived from the middle to late Carboniferous; suggesting a possible age of the imprint at around 300 million years old.
This would mean that an actual wheel became stuck millions of years ago and dissolved over time due to a process called diagenesis, where sediments are lithified into sedimentary rocks, as is common with fossil remains.
Diagenesis () is the process that describes physical and chemical changes in sediments first caused by water-rock interactions, microbial activityand compaction after their deposition. The increase of pressure and temperature only starts to play a role as sediments get buried much deeper in the Earth's crust.
In the early stages, the transformation of poorly consolidated sediments into sedimentary rock (lithification) is simply accompanied by a reduction in porosity and water expulsion (clay sediments), while their main mineralogical assemblages remain unaltered.
As the rock is carried deeper by further deposition above, its organic content is progressively transformed into kerogens and bitumens. The process of diagenesis excludes surface alteration (weathering) and deep metamorphism.
There is no sharp boundary between diagenesis and metamorphism, but the latter occurs at higher temperatures and pressures. Hydrothermal solutions, meteoric groundwater, rock porosity, permeability, dissolution/precipitation reactions, and time are all influential factors.
-Wikipedia
A miner below a wheel imprint in the mine. (Author provided) SMXL
The following is an extract from a letter written by S. Kasatkin (translated from Ukrainian) in reference to his testimony of having been witness to the anomalous wheel imprint discovered by his team of miners in 2008:
‘This finding is not a PR action. In due time (2008), we as a team of engineers and workers asked the mine director to invite scientists for detailed examination of the object, but the director, following the instructions of the then owner of the mine, prohibited such talks and instead only ordered to accelerate work on passing through this section of lava and on fast ‘charging’ of the section with mining equipment. Owing to that, this artifact and the smaller one found during further work came to be in a tunnel blockage and could not be taken out and studied. It is good that there were people, who in spite of the director’s prohibition, photographed this artifact. I have connections with the people who first discovered these imprints and also with those who photographed them. We have more than a dozen witnesses. As you understand, the admission in the mine is strictly limited (it is dangerous on sudden emissions) and to obtain such permit is rather difficult. The ‘wheel’ was printed on sandstone of the roof. Guys (drifters) tried to ‘cut away’ the find with pick hammers and to take it out to the surface, but sandstone was so strong (firm) that, having been afraid to damage a print, they have left it in place. At present the mine is closed (officially since 2009) and access to the ‘object’ is impossible - the equipment is dismantled and the given layers are already flooded.(with water)’
The wheel.
With only this written testimony and that of the other witnesses, the photographs remain the only proof of this anomalous imprint, but it must be deemed worthy of mention despite any difficulties verifying the details beyond that which you have read.
For, if the photographic evidence is indeed legitimate, then one must question how a man-made wheel became embedded in such ancient strata, when according to scientific orthodoxy man had not even evolved yet.
Contemporaneous Cartwheel
Here is the design of a cartwheel made out of wood that was common prior to the industrial age.
Yeah.
You all might want to compare it with the wheel found in the 300 million year old limestone.
A curious thing about this cartwheel
it’s very difficult to make out, and (as far as I know) no one bothered to measure the wheel, from the pictures, it appears diminutive.
Most cartwheels that I have seen and know of from my personal experiences tend to be large. They are perhaps, 150 cm in diameter. (With obvious variations of course). This is roughly five feet in diameter.
This wheel appears to be much less than that. Maybe 100 cm in diameter, or roughly three feet.
Judging from this singular article, and extrapolating with many assumptions, you might want to suggest that the species, or creatures that manufactured this wheel were diminutive in size as well. Perhaps, 120 cm high (4 feet).
If so, then this would be in agreement with the hand bell that was found in a lump of coal that is contemporaneous with this wheel.
The wheel apparently has metal banding on both the hub and the wheel. This implies directly, that the species that manufacturing this wheel was also able to work in metal.
Why is this an OOPART?
It’s not just that this wheel predates the “bronze age” of human technological advancement, but it predates all primates.
The wheel pre-dates to the time of the dinosaurs.
The Earth, 300 years ago…
This was a time before even the mighty dinosaurs roamed the Earth. A time in history when the plants and animals would be unrecognizable to us today, well most of them.
You’ll probably already know that at this time the Earth’s continents were fused together in the supercontinent Pangea. This supercontinent would eventually break up and produce the modern configuration of continents we are all too familiar with.
Professor Roger Steinberg from Del Mar College hand drew a sheet of paper with 5000 dots on it. He then photocopied it 200 times and stuck them all together to show his students. When shown the paper, he asked her students to guess the number of dots they could see. Estimates ranged from 4.6 billion (the age of the Earth) to 13.7 billion (the age of the Universe).
They were all shocked when he revealed it was only actually 1 million. Now imagine 60,000 of those sheets stuck together and you’ll “get a feel” for the length of time we are talking about here. Given the average dimensions for A4 paper (21 by 29.7 cm or 0.06 m2) that would cover an area of 3600 m2!
Now imagine this 300 times larger!
Incredible!
300 million years ago puts us firmly within the Palaeozoic period of geological history, technically speaking within the Permian-Pennsylvanian boundary. This was a time of great change in the animal kingdom. Amphibians had evolved into reptiles that will one day give birth to all-conquering dinosaurs in a few tens of millions of years.
300 million years ago puts us firmly within the Palaeozoic period of geological history.
The plants that were in the carboniferous period were very similar to those present in a tropical climate. It was known for swamp forest which had lots of life. Lycopsids were abundant during the Carboniferous period and were a big source of carbon. There was a lot of coal during this time period so it helped the coal a lot. Then the lycopsids went extinct due to a drying trend. After that ferns and sphenopsids were dominant.
The land was dominated by the ancestors of all mammals, the Synapsids, and the ancestor of all reptiles and birds, the Diapsids. Living Diapsids include crocodiles, lizards, snakes, and tuatara. The Synapsids would become a highly diversified group throughout the Permian ultimately evolving into the first mammals during the Triassic.
The iconic apex predator of the period, the Dimetrodon, would rule the land. This chap, although looking pretty reptilian, is actually more closely related to you than the dinosaurs that would follow it.
The Dimetrodon was the apex predator.
In the oceans, ammonites and ancient fish and sharks roamed the depths. Plant life on land was undergoing a revolution changing from the giant swamps of the Carboniferous to truly modern Gymnosperms taking dominance.
At this time in Earth’s history, the continents of the modern world were tightly locked together in the supercontinent known as Pangea. It is believed this assembly formed somewhere around 335 million years ago. It wasn’t to last, however.
The restless “gubbins” of the Earth would tear this assembly apart about 175 million years ago through a process known as plate tectonics. This gradual motion of the plates still continues today, in fact, Australia and India (they share the same plate), for example, are actually sliding northeast towards Asia and the central Pacific Ocean.
This a picture of what the world looked like during the Carboniferous Period. As you can see it looks nothing like the world we know today. The continents are in process of forming a super continent called Pangea.
So there you go. That’s how the world looked 300 million years ago. Cool eh?
The Carboniferous Period (350-300 Million Years Ago)
Some of the animals that were present during the Carboniferous period were Amphibiamus lyelli, Which had long snouts, short limbs and flattened heads. Labachia is an early relative of they conifers. Crocodiles were there and hey are still present today. There were some dinosaurs but not as many as the Mesozoic era. There was also marine reptiles, lizards,snakes, birds and land snails. They also had many insects such as big dragonflies, mayflies, millipedes, scorpions and spiders. The millipedes scorpions and spiders were very good for the environment. There was hylonomos which were lightly built with deep strong jaws and slender limbs. Some other animals were gastropods, bonyfish and sharks.
A Look at Prehistoric Life During the Carboniferous Period.
Amphibamus grandiceps, a dissorophoid temnospondyl from the late Carboniferous of Illinois.
The name “Carboniferous” reflects the most famous attribute of the Carboniferous period: the massive swamps that cooked, over tens of millions of years, into today’s vast reserves of coal and natural gas. However, the Carboniferous period (359 to 299 million years ago) was also notable for the appearance of new terrestrial vertebrates, including the very first amphibians and lizards.
Climate and Geography
The global climate of the Carboniferous period was intimately linked with its geography.
During the course of the preceding Devonian period, the northern supercontinent of Euramerica merged with the southern supercontinent of Gondwana, producing the enormous super-supercontinent Pangea, which occupied much of the southern hemisphere during the ensuing Carboniferous.
This had a pronounced effect on air and water circulation patterns, which resulted in a large portion of southern Pangea being covered by glaciers and a general global cooling trend (which, however, didn’t have much effect on the coal swamps that covered Pangea’s more temperate regions).
Inthe swampy forests of the Carboniferous Period, 360 to 286 million years ago, dragonflieswithtwo-and-a-half-foot wingspans darted among the giant ferns. Mayflies grew to canary size. Cockroachesappeared suddenly (as cockroachesdo) for the first time.
-Insects of the Oxygeniferous | DiscoverMagazine
Oxygen made up a much higher percentage of the Earth’s atmosphere than it does today, fueling the growth of terrestrial megafauna, including dog-size insects.
Terrestrial Life During the Carboniferous Period
The climate during the carboniferous period was tropical and mild temperatures. It was a uniform climate, and the early carboniferous period was relatively warm.
Amphibians. Our understanding of life during the Carboniferous period is complicated by “Romer’s Gap,” a 15-million-year stretch of time (from 360 to 345 million years ago) that has yielded virtually no vertebrate fossils.
What we do know, however, is that by the end of this gap, the very first tetrapods of the late Devonian period, themselves only recently evolved from lobe-finned fish, had lost their internal gills and were well on their way toward becoming true amphibians.
Carboniferous life.
By the late Carboniferous, amphibians were represented by such important genera as Amphibamus and Phlegethontia, which (like modern amphibians) needed to lay their eggs in water and keep their skin moist, and thus couldn’t venture too far onto dry land.
Reptiles. The most important trait that distinguishes reptiles from amphibians is their reproductive system: The shelled eggs of reptiles are better able to withstand dry conditions, and thus don’t need to be laid in water or moist ground.
The evolution of reptiles was spurred by the increasingly cold, dry climate of the late Carboniferous period.
One of the earliest reptiles yet identified, Hylonomus, appeared about 315 million years ago, and the giant (almost 10 feet long) Ophiacodon only a few million years later.
By the end of the Carboniferous, reptiles had migrated well toward the interior of Pangea. These early pioneers went on to spawn the archosaurs, pelycosaurs, and therapsids of the ensuing Permian period. (It was the archosaurs that went on to spawn the first dinosaurs nearly a hundred million years later.)
Invertebrates. As noted above, the Earth’s atmosphere contained an unusually high percentage of oxygen during the late Carboniferous period, peaking at an astounding 35%.
This surplus was especially beneficial to terrestrial invertebrates, such as insects, which breathe via the diffusion of air through their exoskeletons, rather than with the aid of lungs or gills.
Carboniferous life.
The Carboniferous was the heyday of the giant dragonfly Megalneura, the wingspan of which measured up to 2.5 feet, as well as the giant millipede Arthropleura, which attained lengths of almost 10 feet.
This is a drawing of the Dragon flies that were around during this time period. As you can see they look similar to the ones we have today except for their much larger size.
As well, as the domestically evolved Mantid species.
Insects of the Carboniferous Period
During the Carboniferous, numerous new insect families developed on Earth, with many insect species growing to incredible sizes. Fortunately, there’s a distinct lack of eight-foot-long millipedes today.
Bugs today are minuscule compared to the Carboniferous period, likely due to the way that insects breathe and how that system fails to hold up at large scales.
Invertebrate insects grew to enormous sizes.
Insect respiration relies on a series of small tubes, or tracheae, spread throughout their bodies. Most insects don’t even “breathe,” exactly, but rather allow oxygen to passively diffuse throughout their respiratory systems. When an insect gets too large, these tracheae can’t collect enough oxygen to support their bodies.
Around 300 million years ago, however, Earth was saturated with oxygen. Today’s atmosphere is 21% oxygen, while the Carboniferous period had an atmosphere that was 35% oxygen. With this overabundance, insects’ respiratory systems could support larger bodies than what we think of as typical. Being big is, generally, a good thing: large animals stand to win in a fight, can store more energy for when resources are scarce, and retain heat more efficiently.
Animals that were passive absorbers of oxygen, like insects, started growing to huge sizes. And I mean HUGE.
There was a species of caterpillar that grew to 2.5 metres in length, a scorpion that grew to 70 cm and a dragonfly that had a wingspan of 75 cm. Yikes!
Invertebrate insects grew to enormous sizes.
In fact, the size of many modern insects is only limited by ambient levels of oxygen. It’s not a genetic limit. More oxygen equals bigger size. There are scientists who are, right now, trying to grow large insects inside oxygen chambers. Someone should tell them to stop. PLEASE STOP.
For insects, there needed to be more oxygen in the air for this to happen. The extra oxygen didn’t suddenly appear, however; this change in the atmosphere can be attributed to the arrival of the first trees on the planet.
Prior to the Carboniferous period, trees didn’t exist. During this time, the first things that could properly be recognized as trees appeared. These were unlike the trees we know today—they were more like massive ferns with shallow roots that made them prone to falling over. They grew throughout the swamps that covered most of the planet during this period.
Invertebrate insects grew to enormous sizes.
However, ancient trees and modern trees do share a crucial characteristic. They both are made of a cellulose and lignin composite—wood. Wood also happens to be an excellent store of carbon. As these trees grew taller and taller to compete for sunlight, they sucked more and more carbon out of the atmosphere and exchanged it for oxygen, fundamentally changing the composition of the atmosphere.
Wood was a novel material on the planet: the fungi and microbes capable of digesting it didn’t exist yet. When these trees fell over and died, they stayed in place. Tree trunks slowly accumulated over the swampy Earth, storing away much of the carbon in the atmosphere. This is where the name of this period of time comes from: Carboniferous is Latin for coal-bearing. In fact, as layers of dead trees piled on top of each other, they were gradually compressed into a massive layer of coal, which is where we get most of the coal we use today.
Invertebrate insects grew to enormous sizes.
All of this paints a very surreal picture of ancient Earth. It would have been a moist, swampy place covered in endless fields of timber and giant ferns, crawling with Lovecraftian insects the size of your arm or larger.
Crazed boffins in the USA say they have successfully carried out a Jurassic Park-style project in which enormous flesh-eating creatures from the remote prehistoric past have been successfully bred in the laboratory. Incomprehensibly this laboratory is not located on a remote island.
As many readers will doubtless be aware, during the late Paleozoic era the Earth was, if not exactly ruled or terrorized, at the least very seriously bothered by swarms of gigantic dragonflies with wingspans around 70cm across. The monster insects will have been all the more troublesome as dragonflies “need to hunt live prey”, according to experts.
One such expert is Dr John VandenBrooks, who has after a lengthy struggle managed to breed such much-enlarged dragonflies in his Arizona laboratory. The large size was achieved by enhancing atmospheric oxygen levels to 31 per cent, as seen in the Paleozoic (today’s air is only about 20 per cent O2).
Proudly showing off the results of their genetic experimentation.
The hard bit, according to the prof, was not the creation of this artificially enriched (or “hyperoxic”) atmosphere but the actual care and feeding of the monstrous, prehistoric winged flesh-eaters.
“Dragonflies are notoriously difficult to rear,” boasts VandenBrooks. “We are one of the only groups to successfully rear them to adulthood under laboratory conditions.”
According to a statement issued by the Geological Society of America:
There is no such thing as dragonfly chow. As juveniles they need to hunt live prey and in fact undergraduate students Elyse Muñoz and Michael Weed working with Dr VandenBrooks had to resort to hand feeding the dragonflies.
It’s to be hoped that the unfortunate undergrads escaped from the hyperoxia chambers with their hands and other body parts intact. Plenty more where they came from, no doubt.
Not content with his creation of huge flesh-eating Paleozoic hyper-dragonflies, VandenBrooks also sought to breed greatly enlarged cockroaches and other horrors using similar hypercharged breeding pens. However this time the experiments were a failure, even once the hyper-roaches had been blasted with incredibly powerful energy rays at a handy atom-smasher.
The disappointed prof, perhaps assisted by surviving members of his team, is to reveal details of his accomplishments at a convention in Colorado.
Yikes!
Giant Millipede.
Marine Life During the Carboniferous Period
With the extinction of the distinctive placoderms (armored fish) at the end of the Devonian period, the Carboniferous isn’t especially well known for its marine life, except insofar as some genera of lobe-finned fish were closely related to the very first tetrapods and amphibians that invaded dry land.
Falcatus, a close relative of Stethacanthus, is probably the best-known Carboniferous shark, along with the much bigger Edestus, which is known primarily by its teeth.
As in preceding geologic periods, small invertebrates like corals, crinoids, and arthropods were plentiful in the Carboniferous seas.
Plant Life During the Carboniferous Period
The dry, cold conditions of the late Carboniferous period weren’t especially hospitable to plants—but that still didn’t prevent these hardy organisms from colonizing every available ecosystem on dry land.
The Carboniferous witnessed the very first plants with seeds, as well as bizarre genera like the 100-foot-tall club moss Lepidodendron and the slightly smaller Sigillaria.
Lepidodendron trees. However, by most accounts they existed in dense forests with very thick and deep swampy undergrowth. So if you add that green boggy mess to the picture you would have a better idea of what the tree actually looked like.
The most important plants of the Carboniferous period were the ones inhabiting the large belt of carbon-rich “coal swamps” around the equator, which were later compressed by millions of years of heat and pressure into the vast coal deposits we use for fuel today.
Bruno, a fellow forum member and moderator of the naturalistes forum has a ton of plant fossil examples and reconstruction info over on that site..
Take a look at each page and you'll see the closeup detail of fossils of the genus Lepidodendron and lots of reconstructions that will help your cause.
He's also got a wealth of info on the other major plant members of the forest in that website....days and days worth of fossil images and reconstructions. It is a treasure!
http://forums-naturalistes.forums-actifs.com/t2395-lepidodendron-sternberg-1820
Carboniferous period summary
During this period in time, there was one super continent on the earth. It had plentiful oxygen which permitted the evolution of insects to grow to enormous sizes and develop specialized intelligence’s over the years.
Most other creatures were still primitive and resembled proto-dinosaurs. These were smaller creatures that were just then finding their way on the food chain. There were NO apes, primates or humans.
Ancient Tracks
Yet…
Evidence for the existence of wheeled vehicles in antiquity has surfaced all over the world. They do so as petrified ancient tracks.
They are found in France, Spain, Italy, Malta, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and even North America.
Prehistoric “Cart ruts”
"I believe we’re seeing the indicators of the civilization which existed sooner than the vintage introduction of this global,” Dr. Koltypin mentioned. “All those rocky fields had been coated with ruts left thousands and thousands of years in the past…we don’t seem to be speaking about human beings. We are coping with some more or less automobiles or all-terrain vehicles.”
-Alienpolicy
A prehistoric site known formally as Misrah Ghar il-Kbir meaning the Great Cave in Maltese (and commonly referred to as Clapham Junction), is located at Siggiewi, near the Dingli Cliffs in Malta.
It is at this now famous site that what have been termed ‘cart ruts’ cut into the limestone have mystified all that have visited the area.
Cart ruts suggestive of an axle connected pair of wheels.
Likewise, a number of unusual tracks in stone are also visible on the island of Sicily at the Greek amphitheater called the Great Theater of Syracuse.
Interestingly, and paradoxically, most archaeologists have suggested that the Maltese tracks were probably created by Sicilian settlers who traveled to Malta around 2000 BC at the start of the Bronze Age.
Yet more tracks are to be found in Turkey.
Some at Sofca cover an area roughly 45 by 10 miles (72.42 by 16.09 km), and also in Cappadocia, where several pockets of tracks can be seen.
The many ruts discovered around the world have caused a great deal of controversy as to their purpose, age, and origin.
These mysterious objects remain up for debate, but due to the association and close proximity with megalithic structures, in Malta particularly, and due to the fact that many tracks are now submerged below the sea in that region, many researchers have concluded that the fossilized lines show signs of great antiquity.
‘Cart rut’ tracks in Sofca, Turkey. (Author provided)
Bizarrely, considering the anomalous wheel print discovered in Ukraine that we have just discussed, a medieval city-fortress in the Crimean Mountains of Ukraine called Chufut-Kale lies in ruins, but also plays host to a number of cart ruts in stone like those at the nearby site of Eski-Kermen.
"We can think that ancient vehicles on wheels had been drove on comfortable soil, perhaps a rainy floor, and as a result of their weight the ruts had been so deep. Later those ruts – and all the floor round – simply petrified and secured all the proof,”
-Alienpolicy
Dr. Alexander Koltypin is a geologist and director of the Natural Science Research Center at Moscow’s International Independent University of Ecology and Politology.
He has spent a great deal of time visiting these sites and comparing them to one another in search of similarities.
“I first saw tracks in stone - fossilized car or terrain vehicle traces (usually called cart ruts) on Neogen plantation surface (peneplene in Phrygian) plain in May 2014 (Central Anatolia Turkey).
They were situated in the field of development of Middle and Late Miocene tuffs and tuffites and according to age analysis of nearby volcanic rocks, had middle Miocene age of 12-14 million years,” wrote Koltypin.
This particular region which Koltypin has researched further is relatively unknown and the guide books offer nothing in the way of information.
Whilst orthodox researchers claim that the tracks are simply the remnants of old petrified cart ruts from the kind of wheeled vehicles which donkeys or camels would have pulled, Koltypin has other ideas.
“I will never accept it,” he explained when confronted with the standard explanations. “I myself will always remember . . . many other inhabitants of our planet wiped from our history.”
Raddet ir-Roti Cart Ruts, Xemxija Heritage Trail in St. Paul’s Bay, Malta. (Frank Vincentz/ CC BY SA 3.0 )
Upon measuring the width and length of the tracks at the Phrygian Valley site, he is convinced that they were created by vehicles of a similar length to modern cars but with tires 9 inches (22.86 cm) wide.
With the depth of the impressions of the tracks in stone exceeding that which one would associate with small carts, Koltypin maintains that the vehicles responsible must have been much heavier.
"As a geologist, I will unquestionably inform you that unknown antediluvian (sooner than the flood) all-terrain vehicles drove round Central Turkey some 12-14 million years in the past. The technique of specifying the age of volcanic rocks may be very smartly studied and labored out,”-Alienpolicy
He theorizes that whichever civilization drove the heavy vehicles that created the tracks were most likely responsible for the many different but identical roads, ruts and underground complexes which are scattered around the entire Mediterranean, more than 12 million years ago.
Aware that the process of petrification can occur within a relatively short period, Koltypin insists that the heavy mineral deposits which coat the tracks and the visible erosion are suggestive of…
…of a greater antiquity;
…along with the surrounding underground cities, irrigation systems, wells, and more, which also show signs of being millions of years old in his view.
Koltypin wrote on his website,
‘We are dealing with extremely tough lithified (petrified) sediments, covered with a thick layer of weathering, that takes millions of years to develop, full of multiple cracks with newly developed minerals in them, which could only emerge in periods of high tectonic activity.’
It is evident that much research is needed to clarify the age and origin of the many tracks that are being discovered.
Discoveries which occur at multiple geographical locations, all over the world.
And yes, it is easy to simply state that they are the product of old carts which once trundled through these parts.
But actual investigation may well reveal far more complex and remarkable explanations which could well correlate with other things.
Other things, such as the mysterious remnants of an unknown ancient civilization as postulated by Alexander Koltypin.
The sheer presence of the fossilized wheel found in the Ukraine is certainly suggestive of the fact that the ancients may have had access to more technology and know-how than is currently accepted.
Especially when we KNOW that the world pretty much looked a little like this…
About the ruts
Don’t the ruts resemble trying to move carts through very marshy, muddy land? Just exactly the kind of terrain and environment that existed 300 million years ago?
Typical terrain 300 million years ago.
Conclusion
Dates are being bantered about of 300 million years, and 12 million years. In any event these dates pre-date apes, monkeys, primates and proto-humans.
Yet, we find the impossible.
Not only a wheel firmly embedded deep down inside a mine shaft, but ruts that take many centuries to harden into stone. Couple that with the discoveries of chains, metal lamps, bells, and other objects all pulled out of 300 million year old coal, it makes one wonder what is really going on.
Perhaps instead of trying to reationalize how these OOPART objects can exist relative to the history that is taught in school, perhaps we should realize that at signifigant points in time…
…in this case,
300 million years ago
12 million years ago
…that civilizations existed upon the earth. That these civilizations possessed tool-making ability, (as shown in other articles) metal forming ability, and the ability to work together in groups to create large megalithic structures that resemble boulders and rocks today.
And…
…instead of saying that mankind, or proto-humans created these objects, wouldn’t it be cleaner, more sensible, and easier to simply acknowledge that there must have been other civilizations, populated by other creatures living upon the earth at those far, far distant times.
A diminutive, and smaller than human, species… capable of living in a high oxygen content environment… where the oxygen made them grow to enormous sizes (though still smaller than humans). Capable of fabricating things out of wood, such as the Lepidodendron tree. And capable of metal working, which means that they had control over fire, and an understanding on how to mine ore.
And when we understand that point, we are truly able to see the insignificance of the human species on the grand scale of things.
Do you want more?
I have more posts like this in my OOPARTs Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Today I woke up at the crack of dawn, made my self a nice stout coffee (after I washed my face) and ate it with some buttered baguettes. It’s a nice little routine that I have, especially since I found a bakery that makes these kinds of bread instead of the soft and sweet “sponge cakes” (style breads) that are irritatingly common throughout China these days.
Sweet breads are not my favorite, though. Bagels are. And finding a proper bagel in China is an exercise in futility.
My old dog was snoring and barking in his deep doggie dreams. His little doggie paws were making padding moves and he was softly barking between his snoring.
It was a nice lovely and calm morning.
I sat down, fired up my computers, sat down (after I measured my blood pressure) and checked my email, as the dawn was lightening up. I could feel the fresh ocean breeze carry the fragrances of the local flowers, and the birds were singing their morning songs. It was calm and pleasant.
Uncle MM has left me some bars of gold…
What do you know!
My long lost great uncle Metallicman has died without any heirs. And I am the closest relative. Who would have figured?
What are the odds?
What’s more, he’s got a couple of billion dollars in the bank and I was contacted to see if I was his long, lost relative.
My goodness. Imagine that!
My name is Fabian Artoro, an asset management brokerage consultant. I am contacting you on behalf of my late client who worked as an independent engineering contractor in a gold mining company in my country, the Republic of Ghana.
He was my client until his sudden demise on the 24th of April 2018, fatal car crash, his wife and their only daughter were all involved in that car crash along Kumassi express Road.
Sadly, all occupants of the vehicle, unfortunately, lost their lives. My client had funds, a huge amount in one of the financial institutions here and it is in the process of being confiscated by the state as unclaimed funds...
I’m sure it is legitimate.
Don’t you?
Well, After checking my normal (tap, click and move on) websites, and finding out that they are all parroting the same-old, same-old nonsense, I moved on. You do get tired of the same spiel day in, and day out.
What am I talking about?
Well, I am talking about this…
First up, your daily dose of Anti-China…
It’s been a daily top-line item in my feeds since 2016.
Reminds me of the movie “Battleship”. Nice CGI, by the way. And yeah, this was the entire plot and story line behind it. Don’t you know…
Well that was about as useful as giving a dolphin a pair of crutches.
So then it’s off to MM, and I check the comments. Ohhh baby!
MM Comment Section
Right there at the top of my comment “awaiting approval” list is this piece of insulting passive-aggressive bullshit.
I see you’re still doing the bidding of your new country comrade, it’s dishonest to hide the fact that you are a round-eyed Chinese operative…apparently there is no such thing as a retired intelligence officer.
I am too old for this nonsense.
I’ve lived in China for nearly two decades and no one has ever used the term “comrade“. I guess this jackass never got the memo. He’s probably still talking about how groovy the Mod Squad is, and fondling his “love beads”.
I’m dishonest? Even in prison they told me that I “couldn’t lie worth shit“. I can’t. So I just don’t try. I tell you it straight. You either take it or not. It really makes my life simpler. What you see is what you get.
“Round eyes” sounds pretty fucking racist to me.
Idiots abound in this world.
Sometimes I wonder if they really believe what they say, or that they want to live inside a rotten world-line template. This “fellow” is certainly making his MWI topographical map “interesting“.
Here’s a MM secret; if you want to have a nice calm and happy life, make others happy. If you want to have a problem-some, and tumultuous life, then spend your time making others miserable.
Anyways, it’s 7am and I could use a beer.
Do you “feel” me?
Beer and pancakes.
The rest of the world is not my problem. You all will see what the fuck is going on in your little neck of the woods soon enough. Especially this piece of shit (will).
Anyways…
I am sorry that I have been so busy with all these other issues lately. But I do “feel” a need to start post more MAJestic related stuff, and that means OOPART stuff as well.
Which leads me to this mystery…
The Aiud Mystery in Transylvania
Yeah. Aiud is in the Transylvania region of Romania. It in the state of Alba. It’s that triangle shaped region in the map below.
The Transylvania region of Romania.
.
Of all the hundreds of websites about this mystery object, not one single one bothered to look up Aiud on a map. They just cut and paste from other websites.
Slothful. Lazy.
Money-grubbing. Greedy.
“For-profit” oriented assholes.
Doesn’t anyone ever just do things because they WANT to do it? Jeeze!
Anyways, in 1974, in Romania, East of Aiud, (in Transylvania) a group of workers, on the banks of the river Mures, discovered three buried objects in a sand trench 10 meters deep.
In sand, near a river, implies that the river eventually covered these items and buried them in silt. Then later, when the river became smaller or changed it’s path, the silt remained as sandy soil.
Of the three items, two of the objects proved to be Mastodon bones. These dating from between the Miocene and the Pleistocene periods. The third object — the Aluminum Wedge of Aiud, also known as the Object of Aiud, is a mysterious wedge-shaped block of aluminum metal.
The mysterious aluminum object was discovered by chance in 1974 at a depth of 10 meters at a quarry by the banks of river Mures near the Romanian town of Aiud. The artifact weighs approximately 2 kilos (length: 21cm; width: 12.5 cm; thickness: 7cm).
According to researchers and engineers it appears very similar to the feet fused on modern landing gear found on aircraft with vertical landing and take-off.
For conventional investigators it appears as a hammer head.
In its vicinity researchers found two mastodon bones(extinct large tusked mammal species that lived between 10,000 and 80,000 BC). Based on the findings next to the object it can be assumed that the object is at least 10,000 years old.
-HistoryDisclosure
Because it is out of place, it is considered an OOPART.
After all, contemporaneous belief is that Mastodons were unable to fabricate tools, let alone precision manufacture of aircraft components. They didn’t have opposing thumbs, don’t you know. Let alone the fact that those enormous tusks of theirs would get in the way of precision manufacturing…
That goes as well for the local humans at the time. They are considered to be primitive.
Early humans. (Romanticized.)
.
So what the heck is a pawl from a landing gear doing with some mastodon bones near a river in Romania?
Dating the object
According to conventional history the artifact should not exist since aluminum was discovered in 1807 and wasn’t produced in any usable form until after 1886.
A subsequent dating analysis (I haven’t been able to find details on the dating technique used) on the artifact indicated that it was at least 200,000 years old.
This date apparently came from the geological evidence where the bones and pawl were found. When the “front end loader” excavated the trench (or what ever equivalent did so in the 1970’s in Romania) the soil, and the mastodon bones indicated a very approximate date sometime within the Pleistocene.
Mastodon, (genus Mammut), any of several extinctelephantine mammals (family Mammutidae, genus Mammut) that first appeared in theearlyMiocene (23 million to 2.6 million years ago) and continued in various forms through the Pleistocene Epoch (from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago).
-Mastodon | Description, Distribution, Extinction, & Facts ...
Depending on the particular dating of the bones, we can assume that the pawl was contemporaneous with the bones in some way. Which could mean that the primitive humans picked up this pawl at some point in time, and were using it to smash open Mastodon bones for food.
.
Obviously they weren't using it on one of their aircraft, or it just suddenly "fell off" some aircraft speeding along two million years ago, eh?
.
The dating (on the Mastodon bones) would be somewhere between 23 million years ago and 11,700 million years ago. Which is a (phew!) long span of time.
.
So I’m not in agreement with the dating of the trench, the location, the bones, or anything else. Except to say that the aluminum predates the discovery, manufacture and utilization of aluminum in that form and shape. Thus making it an OOPART.
However, a conjecture…
Perhaps primitive man found this aluminum pawl, and found a use for it. It is very useful for cracking open bones to get at the marrow.
.
If we go ahead with the idea that perhaps a primitive human or pre-human picked up this aluminum pawl in it’s travels…
…and thinking that it is a nice “stone”, being light and easy to carry (5 pounds), with a nice pointed end…
…that shows abrasions on the pointed ends and sides…
…which makes this scenario likely…
…then we can date this part as used as a tool by the pre-humanoids in that region at that time.
The oldest handmade stone tools discovered yet predate any known humans and may have been wielded by an as-yet-unknown species, researchers say.
The 3.3-million-year-old stone artifacts are the first direct evidence that early human ancestors may have possessed the mental abilities needed to figure out how to make razor-sharp stone tools. The discovery also rewrites the book on the kind of environmental and evolutionary pressures that drove the emergence of toolmaking.
Chimpanzees and monkeys are known to use stones as tools, picking up rocks to hammer open nuts and solve other problems. However, until now, only members of the human lineage — the genus Homo, which includes the modern human species Homo sapiens and extinct humans such as Homo erectus — were thought capable of making stone tools. [See Photos of the Oldest Stone Tools]
Ancient stone artifacts from East Africa were first uncovered at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania in the mid-20th century. Those stone tools were later associated with fossils of the ancient human species Homo habilis, discovered in the 1960s.
-LiveScience
So…
This aluminum pawl could be 2.3 million years old.
Humans during the Pleistocene
Let’s have Caleb Strom explain what “humans” were like during this time. (From here.)
Theevolution of anatomically modern humans took place during the Pleistocene. In the beginning of the Pleistocene Paranthropus species were still present, as well as early human ancestors, but during the lower Palaeolithic they disappeared, and the only hominin species found in fossilic records is Homo erectus for much of the Pleistocene.
-Pleistocene - Wikipedia
The Pleistocene epoch is a geologic epoch which began around 2.6 Mya (Million years ago) and came to an end around 11,700 BP (Before Present). It is characterized by lower sea levels than the present epoch and colder temperatures. During much of the Pleistocene, Europe, North America, and Siberia were covered by extensive ice sheets and glaciers. The Pleistocene was an important time because it was when the human genus first evolved.
The Pleistocene ( PLYSE-tə-seen, -toh-, often colloquially referred to as the Ice Age) is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world's most recent period of repeated glaciations.
The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology. The name is a combination of Ancient Greek πλεῖστος (pleīstos, "most") and καινός (kainós (latinized as cænus), "new".
-Wikipedia
The flora and fauna today also more or less reached their current form during the Pleistocene. Most Pleistocene animals and Pleistocene plants also exist in the Holocene. Furthermore, the Pleistocene epoch was the last geological epoch in which humans had relatively little impact.
While parts of the world were dryer – such as central Europe, which was mostly covered in tundra, other parts of the world were wetter and greener.
Many of the animals common today were also common in the Pleistocene. Deer, big cats, apes, elephants, and bears could all be found in a Pleistocene landscape. There were also animals that were common which have since gone extinct, such as mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths , and pre-human hominins .
Europe and Asia had significant populations of African fauna. Cave paintings and paleontological finds in Europe reveal that rhinoceroses, lions, and hyenas were all common at that time in southern Europe. The island of Sicily was also inhabited by a dwarf elephant species until surprisingly recent times. Northern Europe was covered in glaciers and inhospitable, while central Europe was tundra. Southern Europe, however, contained forests and was inhabited by numerous species of megafauna, most of which have since died out.
Another important development on the Pleistocene timeline was the emergence of the human genus: Homo. Humans probably evolved out of bipedal apes, such as the Australopithecines and Ardipithecus Ramidus . These early bipedal apes are classified as hominins. Hominins first evolved near the end of the Miocene epoch (25-5 Mya) in south and east Africa. Other than their upright posture and bipedalism, these hominins were not significantly more human than previous apes.
Their skeletons indicate that they resembled modern apes such as chimpanzees and their use of tools was limited or absent. At the beginning of the Pleistocene, however, a new type of hominin appeared. These hominins were taller, more dependent on upright locomotion, and had larger brains, which allowed them to excel in tool use over any previous hominin. These hominins belong to the genus Homo and hominins in this genus are simply called humans.
The earliest human species was Homo Habilis . The first examples of this species appeared about 2.3 million years ago. They used simple flake tools which were made by taking rocks and striking sharp flakes off other rocks – which could be used as cutting tools. Homo Habilis was more technologically inclined than its hominin predecessors, but it was still closer to earlier and more ape-like hominins than modern humans.
Homo Habilis
The next earliest human species is Homo Erectus . The first H. Erectus evolved around 2 million years ago and the last of them did not die out until sometime within the last 100,000 years. Archaeological and paleontological evidence suggest that they may have been the first humans to use culture as a wholesale approach to adapt to their environment. They were more advanced tool users and were also much taller than previous hominins, about six feet (1.83 meters) tall. They were also the first humans to leave Africa. By 1 million years ago, H. Erectus had spread to both Europe and Asia, bringing humans for the first time to these regions.
Homo Erectus
The earliest humans were universally hunter-gatherers. Their use of technology to interact with their environment made them very adaptative – so that humans eventually found their way into every possible environment on the planet: forests, grasslands, deserts, even tundra.
For most of the Pleistocene, humans did not significantly impact their environment. There were no more than a few hundred thousand individuals at a given time and their ability to transform the landscape was limited by primitive technology and limited social organization.
This all changed with the emergence of Homo Sapiens (modern humans) in Africa and Homo Neandertalensis (Neanderthals) in Europe.
Neanderthal
Anatomically modern humans first evolved in Africa around 200,000-300,000 BP. After the emergence of anatomically modern humans, something happened, perhaps a rewiring of the human brain , that led to the emergence of modern behaviors like art, blade production, long distance trade, and more efficient, organized hunting, among other abilities.
This change in behavior caused humans to have a significantly larger influence on their environment than in previous times. This can be seen in the fate of most megafauna, especially in the New World. Megafauna extinctions occurred around 40,000-50,000 years ago in Australia and around 13,000 years ago in North America. Both occurred shortly after the appearance of humans on these continents.
…
Obviously, Homo Neandertalensis (Neanderthals) are unlikely to have mined ore, smelted it, studied how to create alloys, formed it into aircraft components, and machines it for use in aircraft.
Thus we have an OOPART worthy of investigation.
Homo Neandertalensis (Neanderthals) are unlikely to have manufactured this aluminum pawl object.
An investigation ensues
So of course, if you are part of a construction crew and you dig up some bones, and other odd objects you call the authorities. And if the bones or objects look old, you call in the experts from the local museum, college or university to have a look.
Thus the object was sent to the archeological institute of Cluj-Napoca.
After the investigation and study, the block was donated to the History Museum of Transylvania, to be rediscovered and analyzed many years later. (I cover that later on.) Its weight turned out to be 5 pounds, and its approximate measurements are 20 x 12.5 x 7 centimeters.
There are two holes of different sizes.
The object has two arms like features.
Traces of abrasion can be seen on the sides of the object and at its lowest point.
Dr. Niederkorn of the institute for the study of metals and non-metallic minerals located in Magurele, Romania, concluded that the object is comprised of a alloy of an extremely complex metal.
He was not exaggerating.
Twelve different elements combine to form the Aiud Object. It consists of: 89% aluminum, 6.2% copper, 2.84% silicon, 1.81% zinc, 0.41% lead, 0.33% tin, 0.2% zirconium, 0.11% cadmium, 0.0024% nickel, 0.0023% cobalt, 0.0003% bismuth, and trace of galium.
Furthermore, this strange object is covered with a thick layer of aluminum oxide, which lends credence to its antiquity.
"After the analysis of this aluminum oxide layer, "specialists" have confirmed that the object is a minimum of 300 to 400 years old."
But that’s a bullshit guess.
The generation of aluminum oxide depends on the environment and the particular alloy that is being used. Unless you have that exact alloy of aluminum and put it though accelerated life testing, in the environment in question, it is IMPOSSIBLE to determine the age of anything.
Accelerated life testing
Accelerated life testing? What is that?
Well, it’s a common enough and fundamental aspect of engineering product design, but unknown to most other people. it is a way of estimating the life of a product due to environmental concerns. It’s a pretty handy and mature method for determine the life of a given object, or going backwards, the age of an object.
So here’s some basic links for the interested explorer…
But what we really want to determine is the accelerated life test due to corrosion. In that case similar, but more specialized tests must be conducted…
Anacceleratedcorrosiontest is a cyclic climate test for determination of thecorrosionresistance of various types of coatings. In an acceleratedcorrosiontest, corrosion, corrosiontest, corrosion, degradation or failure of materials and products are inducedwithoutchangeincorrosion mechanism (s) in a shorter time period than under normal conditions.
-What is an Accelerated Corrosion Test (ACT)? - Definition ...
www.corrosionpedia.com/definition/1503/accelerated-corrosion-test-act
Different alloys of aluminum oxidase differently. Some alloys are great for marine environments, while others are not that great, but have better strength characteristics. Further complicating the issue is the environment. Exposure to a dry environment is quite different from sitting with in a bog or sandy soil.
The ONLY way that you can accurately test for the oxidation characteristics of a new alloy is to perform extended life testing on a sample of the aluminum alloy within a simulated environment. Otherwise your estimates on aging through oxidation are all wrong.
The Aluminum Pawl. Note the two holes clearly shown.
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Many people have things to say about this object and opinions on dating it.
No one is saying that the aluminum pawl is recent. Aside from making them look silly in the eyes of their contemporaries, it’s obvious that this chunk of metal is old. Really old. The level of corrosion on the object far exceeds any kind of contemporaneous aluminum corrosion. It’s just simply very extraordinary and unusual.
And because of this there are numerous statements being made…
The fact that this strange metal object was found alongside Mastadon bones does cause one to wonder and raises many issues.
And...
Other specialists claim that the object could be 20,000 years old because it was found in a layer with mastodon bone. Perhaps this particular specimen lived in the latter part of the Pleistocene.
And...
Some researchers suppose that this piece of metal was part of a flying object that had fallen into the river. They presume that it had an extraterrestrial origin. Other researchers believe the wedge was made here on Earth and its purpose has not yet been identified.
Ah…
Some have speculated that this object is part of an Aircraft
It looks like a badly corroded locking latch from the retraction mechanism of an aircraft’s undercarriage, but that can’t be….surely?
Can it?
The retraction mechanism of an aircraft’s undercarriage.
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These mechanisms come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. But the closest thing to explain the operational features and functions of this aluminum pawl is the aircraft retraction mechanisms in contemporary aircraft.
I mean it’s more likely that this item was the part of some kind of landing gear mechanism than say a “frying pan”, a “pick axe”, a “railway train wheel”, a metal frame for a window”, a “water pipe” or an “anvil”.
Which makes one wonder what is one doing 2.5 million years ago, being used to break up the bones of a mastodon.
Primitive man would use stones and heavy objects to break open the bones of hunted animals to obtain the marrow inside of the bones.
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Could it have ended up down amongst bones that were deposited thousands of years ago by chance? It just happened to fall off an aircraft, that just happened to be flying a few million years ago, and it just happened to fall into the remains of a dead mastodon.
I guess it could.
Anything is possible.
And while it is possible, it is not probable.
The simplest explanation is probably the closest to the truth.
Whilst it is likely that the philosophy was posthumously attributed to him, as it was based upon common medieval philosophy, it seems to be a result of his minimalist lifestyle.
Occam's razor is more commonly described as 'the simplest answer is most often correct,' although this is an oversimplification. The 'correct' interpretation is that entities should not be multiplied needlessly.Researchers should avoid 'stacking' information to prove a theory if a simpler explanation fits the observations.
Occam's razor is the process of paring down information to make finding the truth easier.In science, it is getting rid of all the assumptions that make no difference to the predictions of the hypothesis. If you have a few hypotheses that could explain an observation, it is usually best to start with the simplest one.-How Occam's Razor Works | HowStuffWorks
Or in other words, look for the simplest explanation, and then go from there. You add and include or discount and discard theories that fit or don’t fit the investigation that you are performing.
Landing gear.
Names on a landing gear
I call it a pawl. But who knows what it’s actual role was.
pawl. (pôl) n. A hinged or pivoted device adapted to fit into a notch of a ratchet wheel to impart forward motionor prevent backward motion. [Perhaps variantofpale or pole, or from French pal (from Old French; see pale1 ).]
-Pawl - definitionofpawlbyTheFreeDictionary
It’s actual use name would be better described differently.
The specific names used on the various elements of an aircraft landing gear mechanism.
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Perhaps instead of a pawl, I could refer to it as a “drag strut to trunnion link walking beam“. Do you think that it would make things clearer?
Aiud in Romania
Ok, well let’s review where it was found. maybe some of you might want to hop on a plane and investigate for yourselves. You know, like Anonymous Jane did regarding the fuselage in The Fuselage embedded within the rocks of Victoria Falls.
If you do, I would be more than happy to post some of your pictures and info here. This is, after all, a collaborative effort.
Location of Romania. (This is for you Americans out there. The rest of the world pretty much knows where Romania is on a map.)
Map of Europe.
As far as where the town is, you need to look on a map. Here is a Romanian political map showing the location of Aiud. It is in the Alba (or Alba Lulia) state, which looks like a triangle.
A map of the various political regions of Romania.
And within this state we can find the location of Aiud in Romania.
A map of Alba, within Romania clearly showing the location of Aiud. “X” marks the spot.
Romania in the Miocene and the Pleistocene
Of course, a few thousand to a few million years ago Romania didn’t look like it does today. There was a lot of water there. With the Carpathian mountains creating a line of islands that interrupted a much larger Black Sea. If the dating was a million years ago, then we can say that the proto-humans who found and used this pawl were not all that far from the shorelines or feeding rivers to the Black Sea.
Palinspastic map for the Late Miocene with indication of palaeobiogeographic units (modified after Popov et al., 2004). Pannonian area emended after Magyar et al. (1999).
Outlines are drawn after palaeogeographic reconstructions or sediment distributions.
Faunas of freshwater systems fringing the Eastern Paratethys and the Italian 'Lago-mare' assemblage do not form a homogenous palaeogeographic entity. They are based on too many localities to be clearly indicated on the map. The Illyrian Region is only poorly supported by the analysis and represents the expiration of the Middle Miocene faunas of that region. Its incorporation into the present framework is only tentative.
Abbreviations: CPMCentral Peri-Mediterranean Dominion; NA-North Aegean Dominion; CA-Central Aegean Dominion; SAA-South Aegean-Anatolian Dominion; 1-Lower Tagus (w); 2-São Teotónio (l); 3-Duero (l); 4-Madrid (l); 5-Teruel (fl); 6-Baix Llobregat (b); 7-Alcalà de Xivert (u); 8-Cabriel (l); 9-Ayora (u); 10-Valencia (u); 11-Granada (l); 12-Spanish 'Lagomare' (b); 13-Palma (b); 14-Bresse-Valence (f); 15-Lower Rhône (m); 16-French 'Lago-mare' (b); 17-Torino hills (b); 18-Volterra (b); 19-Casino (b); 20-Velona (l); 21Cinigiano-Baccinello (l); 22-Sicilian 'Lago-mare' (b); 23-Bełchatów (l); 24-Turiec (l); 25-Pannon (b); 26-Dacia (b, l); 27-Kherson-Odessa region (b); 28-Black Sea depression (b); 29-Rioni Bay (b); 30-Kura Gulf (b); 31-Jazvina (l); 32-Kamengrad (l); 33-Posušje (l); 34-Sarajevo (l); 35-Kosovo (l); 36-Metohia (l); 37-Skopje (l); 38-Stanintsi (w); 39-Katerini (b); 40-Thessaloniki (b); 41-Strimon (b); 42-Limni (w); 43-Markopoulo (l); 44-Athens (l); 45-Gythio (b); 46-Kythira (b); 47-Naxos (u); 48-Heraklion (l); 49-Rhodos (l); 50-Kefalos (fl); 51-Kos (east) (l); 52-Mytilini (fl); 53-Denizli (b); 54-Cumaovası (l); 55-Dumlupınar-Siçanli (u); 56-Behramkale (u); 57-Marmara (f).
Environments are characterised as: b-brackish; f-fluviatile; fl-fluvio-lacustrine; l-lacustrine; m-marginal marine; w-wetlands; u-unknown.
History of Aluminum
This pawl is puzzling because pure aluminum was not readily obtainable until the middle of the 19th century.
Aluminum is not found freely in nature, but is combined with other minerals.
The manufacturing process requires 1,221°F (660.32°C) degrees of heat. Only in the last 100 years or so has the technology existed to successfully separate the materials from the mineral bearing ore.
For decades after it was first identified by British chemist Sir Humphry Davy in the early 1800s, scientists and tinkerers tried, and mostly failed, to find a good method for separating aluminum from everything else that stuck to it.
France’s Emperor Napoleon III was an early proponent of aluminum. He hoped the lightweight metal could be used to produce weapons and armor, giving his soldiers an edge in battle. The emperor funded the work of Henri Sainte-Claire Deville, who found a chemical method for obtaining pure aluminum, but it was still a slow process. An often repeated story goes that Napoleon III, frustrated with progress on aluminum, had much of France’s stock melted down and turned into cutlery. He and his honored guests used aluminum utensils, while everyone else at the imperial dinner table made do with gold.
In 1884, when the Washington Monument was completed, it was capped with a large casting of aluminum. The capping ceremony and the dedication of the monument “were given front-page publicity in the nation’s newspapers and the aluminum point or apex was creditably described,” according to a 1995 article published in the journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. “Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who had never before even heard about aluminum now knew what it was.”
At the time, a pound of aluminum was worth $16 ($419 in today’s dollars).
Two years later, a commercially viable method for extracting aluminum from ore was discovered, and by 1889 the price had fallen to $2 per pound. Within 10 years of commercial refining, it plummeted to just 50 cents a pound.
The modern method of obtaining aluminum was discovered simultaneously by two young scientists working independently on different continents.
In 1886, two men, both 22 years of age — one working in Ohio and the other in northwestern France — developed the modern method for producing aluminum metal.
American Charles Martin Hall went to work after being inspired by a lecture at Oberlin College in which his chemistry professor pronounced that the discoverer of a practical way to produce aluminum “will bless humanity and make a fortune for himself.”
Frenchman Paul Héroult was working on the same problem.
At nearly the same time, the two men hit upon the same answer: electricity, and lots of it.
Still used today, this is how their method works: Alumina from bauxite is dissolved in another mineral, cryolite, at 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit. The molten mixture is poured into a specially designed vat, and vast amounts of electricity are passed through it. The process causes aluminum metal to condense at the bottom of the vat.
The two men fought over ownership of the process they developed to smelt aluminum from bauxite ore. Héroult filed for his patent six weeks before Hall, but the American was able to prove (thanks possibly to notes kept by his sister, Julia Brainerd Hall) that he had actually made the discovery a few weeks before his rival. Ultimately, the two men settled their dispute and became friends.
In 1888, Hall co-founded the Pittsburgh Reduction Co. to produce aluminum. The company later became the aluminum giant Alcoa. The following year, Héroult scaled up the process in France.
The two men died the same year, in 1914, both age 51.
The development of the Hall-Héroult process, as it came to be known, was a major milestone in the Industrial Revolution. But it has also carried an environmental cost: The electricity needed produces large quantities of greenhouse gases. Aluminum production alone is responsible for about 1% of global emissions, according to estimates.
The availability of aluminum at the turn of the 20th century spurred on the age of flight and the Space Age.
Uses for Aluminum
The strength and light weight of aluminum is perfect for aerospace applications.
Aluminum allows designers to build a plane that is as light as possible, can carry heavyloads, uses the least amount of fuel and is impervious to rust. In modern aircraftmanufacture, aluminum is used everywhere. The Concorde, which flew passengers atover twice the speed of sound for 27 years, was built with an aluminum skin.
-Historyof Aluminum in the Aerospace Industry | Metal Super…
27% of all aluminum consumed occurs in the transportation industry, according to Aluminum Leader. This chemical element in the boron group is characterized by a silver-white color and soft, ductile texture. While it’s used in many different applications, one of the most common is aerospace. In fact, aluminum is one of the most common materials used in the construction of airplanes. So, why is aluminum used for this purpose instead of steel or other materials?
Some of the first airliners weren’t made of metal, but instead were made of wood. Although cheap and readily available, wood has a serious flaw that made it hazardous in airplanes: it rotted. There was one instances in which a wooden airliner crashed, killing everyone on board. The cause of the crash was later found to be rotten wood. This prompted manufacturers to quickly phase out wood in favor of metal.
Aluminum is the perfect material to use when manufacturing airplanes, thanks in part to its unique properties and characteristics. It’s strong, lightweight, predictable and inexpensive. Steel and iron are both stronger than aluminum, but strength alone isn’t enough to justify its use in aerospace manufacturing. The problem with steel and iron is its weight. Both of these metals are much heavier than aluminum — and too much weigh restricts an airplane’s ability to takeoff and fly.
It’s estimated that up to 80% of the materials used in modern-day aircraft is aluminum. The Wright brothers used a steel engine in their early-model Flyer plane, which was not only heavy but lacked the power necessary for takeover. As a result, they acquired a special engine made of cast aluminum, which allowed their Flyer-1 to takeoff with ease.
There are several different types of aluminum used in aerospace engineering, some of which include the following:
Aluminum 2024
Aluminum 3003
Aluminum 5052
Aluminum 6061
Aluminum 7075
Note: the number refers to the aluminum’s “grade.”
Of course, aluminum isn’t the only metal used to manufacture airplanes. Carbon-alloy steel is often used for his application as well. When carbon is added to steel, it becomes stronger and more resistant to rust and corrosion. Titanium is another metal that’s commonly used in aerospace engineering. It’s strong, lightweight, and naturally resistant to corrosion. Some companies alloy titanium with iron or manganese to construct the frame and engines for airplanes. These use of these metals, however, is typically less than that of aluminum. Aluminum isn’t the strongest metal, but it maintains a perfect balance of strength and low weight that make it ideal for airplanes.
The metal used and subsequent study
The object was taken to the Archaeological Institute of Cluj-Napoca for metallographic analysis where it was discovered that it was made from a complex alloy consisting 12 different elements.
It was then taken to a laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland, to verify its composition, showed that the artifact was constituted mostly by aluminum (89%), with the minor participation of 11 other metals in specific proportions.
The thick layer of oxide of a millimeter of thickness that covered of even form to the block helped to date the antiquity of this in about 400 years. However, the geological layer in which it was found (Pleistocene) suggests that it already existed some 20,000 years ago in the past.
Florin Gheorghita, had the opportunity to examine the report and the analysis carried out under the direction of Dr. Niederkorn of the Institute for the Study of Nonmetallic Metals and Minerals (ICPMMN), located in Magurele, Romania, stressed in that it is composed of an extremely complex metal alloy.
Gheorghita states that the alloy is composed of 12 different elements, of which the percentage of aluminum volume (89%) has also been established. It also identified the presence of copper (6.2%), silicon (2.84%), zinc (1.81%), lead (0.41%), Laguna (0.33%), zirconium (0, 2%), cadmium (0.11%), nickel (0.0024%), cobalt (0.0023%), bismuth (0.0003%), silver (0.0002%), and gallium (in trace amounts).
People! these are extremely odd material and unusual combinations to have in an aluminum alloy. To say that it is unique is putting it mildly. What kind of mad scientist thought up this combination?
As I have often stated previously, factories don’t just throw what ever alloy of aluminum together and use it. Like steel, copper, bronze and zinc there are specific alloys that are regulated world-wide and used for certain purposes. Thus, by comparing the alloy composition of this object with available alloys “on the books” we can identify many aspects of this object.
We can identify it’s function.
We can identify what nation made it.
We might even be able to identify what smelter factory made the billet.
Isn’t industrial forensics fascinating?
Aluminum-Copper Alloy
The first thing that we note is that it’s most important alloying element is copper.
And from from this we can help determine what the possible function of the pawl was.
Copper has been the most common alloying element almost since the beginning of the aluminum industry, and a variety of alloys in which copper is the major addition were developed.
Most of these alloys fall within one of the following groups:
Cast alloys with 5% Cu, often with small amounts of silicon and magnesium.
Cast alloys with 7-8% Cu, which often contain large amounts of iron and silicon and appreciable amounts of manganese, chromium, zinc, tin, etc.
Cast alloys with 10-14% Cu. These alloys may contain small amounts of magnesium (0.10-0.30% Mg), iron up to 1.5%, up to 5% Si and smaller amounts of nickel, manganese, chromium.
Wrought alloys with 5-6% Cuand often small amounts of manganese, silicon, cadmium, bismuth, tin, lithium, vanadium and zirconium. Alloys of this type containing lead, bismuth, and cadmium have superior machinability.
Durals, whose basic composition is 4-4.5% Cu, 0.5-1.5% Mg, 0.5-1.0% Mn, sometimes with silicon additions.
Copper alloys containing nickel, which can be subdivided in two groups: the Y alloy type, whose basic composition is 4% Cu, 2% Ni, 1.5% Mg; and the Hyduminiums, which usually have lower copper contents and in which iron replaces some of the nickel.
In most of the alloys in this group aluminum is the primary constituent and in the cast alloys the basic structure consists of cored dendrites of aluminum solid solution, with a variety of constituents at the grain boundaries or interdendritic spaces, forming a brittle, more or less continuous network of eutectics.
Wrought products consist of a matrix of aluminum solid solution with the other constituents dispersed within it. Constituents formed in the alloys can be divided in two groups: in the soluble ones are the constituents containing only one or more of copper, lithium, magnesium, silicon, zinc; in the insoluble ones are the constituents containing at least one of the more or less insoluble iron, manganese, nickel, etc.
The type of soluble constituents formed depends not only on the amount of soluble elements available but also on their ratio.
Available copper depends on the iron, manganese and nickel contents; the copper combined with them is not available.
Copper forms (CuFe)Al6 and Cu2FeAl7, with iron, (CuFeMn)Al6 and Cu2Mn3Al20 with manganese, Cu4NiAl, and several not too well known compounds with nickel and iron.
The amount of silicon available to some extent controls the copper compounds formed.
Silicon above 1% favors the FeSiAl5, over the iron-copper compounds and (CuFeMn)3Si2Al15, over the (CuFeMn)Al6 and Cu2Mn3Al20 compounds.
Similarly, but to a lesser extent, available silicon is affected by iron and manganese contents. With the Cu:Mg ratio below 2 and the Mg:Si ratio well above 1.7 the CuMg4Al6 compound is formed, especially if appreciable zinc is present. When Cu:Mg > 2 and Mg:Si > 1.7, CuMgAl2 is formed.
If the Mg:Si ratio is approximately 1.7, Mg2Si and CuAl2 are in equilibrium.
With the Mg:Si ratio 1 or less, Cu2Mg8Si6Al5, is formed, usually together with CuAl2.
When the copper exceeds 5%, commercial heat treatment cannot dissolve it and the network of eutectics does not break up. Thus, in the 10-15% Cu alloys there is little difference in structure between the as-cast and heat treated alloys.
Magnesium is usually combined with silicon and copper. Only if appreciable amounts of lead, bismuth or tin are present, Mg2Sn, Mg2Pb, Mg2Bi3 can be formed.
The effect of alloying elements on density and thermal expansion is additive; thus, densities range from 2 700 to 2 850 kg/m3, with the lower values for the high-magnesium, high-silicon and low-copper alloys, the higher for the high-copper, high-nickel, high-manganese and high-iron contents.
Many of the cast alloys and aluminum-copper-nickel alloys are used for high-temperature applications, where creep resistance is important. Resistance is the same whether the load is tensile or compressive.
Wear resistance is favored by high hardness and the presence of hard constituents. Alloys with 10-15% Cu or treated to maximum hardness have very high wear resistance.
Silicon increases the strength in cast alloys, mainly by increasing the castability and thus the soundness of the castings, but with some loss of ductility and fatigue resistance, especially when it changes the iron-bearing compounds from FeM2SiAl8 or Cu2FeAl7, to FeSiAl5.
Magnesium increases the strength and hardness of the alloys, but, especially in castings, with a decided decrease in ductility and impact resistance.
Iron has some beneficial strengthening effect, especially at high temperature and at the lower contents (< 0.7% Fe).
Nickel has a strengthening effect, similar to that of manganese, although more limited because it only acts to reduce the embrittling effect of iron. Manganese and nickel together decrease the room-temperature properties because they combine in aluminum-manganese-nickel compounds and reduce the beneficial effects of each other. The main effect of-nickel is the increase in high-temperature strength, fatigue and creep resistance.
Titanium is added as grain refiner and it is very effective in reducing the grain size. If this results in a better dispersion of insoluble constituents, porosity and nonmetallic inclusions, a decided improvement in mechanical properties results.
Lithium has an effect very similar to that of magnesium: it increases strength, especially after heat treatment and at high temperatures, and there is a corresponding decrease in ductility. Zinc increases the strength but reduces ductility.
Hiduminium
The Hiduminium alloys or R.R. alloys are a series of high-strength, high-temperature aluminium alloys, developed for aircraft use by Rolls-Royce (“RR”) before World War II.
The name Hi–Du-Minium is derived from that of High Duty Aluminium Alloys.
In 1934 the Reynolds Tube Co. began production of extruded structural components for airframes, using R.R.56 alloy supplied by High Duty Alloys.
A new purpose-built plant was constructed at their works in Tyseley, Birmingham.
In time, the post-war Reynolds company, already known for its steel bicycle frame tubes, would attempt to survive in the peacetime market by supplying Hiduminium alloy components for high-end aluminium bicycle cranks and brakes.
The Duralumin alloys had already demonstrated high-strength aluminium alloys. Y alloy‘s virtue was its ability to maintain high strength at high temperatures. R.R alloys were developed by Hall & Bradbury at Rolls-Royce, partly to simplify the manufacture of components using them. A deliberate heat treatment process of multiple steps was used to control their physical properties.
Hiduminium Alloy range
A range of alloys were produced in the R.R.50 range. These could be worked by casting or forging, but they were not intended for rolling as sheet or general machining from bar stock.
Low-creep forging alloy for rotating impellers and compressors
R.R. 59
Forged piston alloy
The number of alloys expanded to support a range of applications and processing techniques. At the Paris Airshow of 1953, High Duty Alloys showed no less than eight different Hiduminium R.R. alloys: 20, 50, 56, 58, 66, 77, 80, 90. Also shown were gas turbine compressor and turbine blades in Hiduminium, and a range of their products in the Magnuminium alloy series.
R.R.58, also Aluminum 2618, comprising 2.5 copper, 1.5 magnesium, 1.0 iron, 1.2 nickel, 0.2 silicon, 0.1 titanium and the remainder aluminum, and originally intended for jet engine compressor blades, was used as the main structural material for the Concorde airframe, supplied by High Duty Alloys, it was also known as AU2GN to the French side of the project.
Later alloys, such as R.R.66, were used for sheet, where high strength was needed in an alloy capable of being worked by deep drawing. This became increasingly important with the faster jet aircraft post-war, as issues such as transonic compressibility became important. It was now necessary for an aircraft’s covering material to be strong, not merely the spar or framing beneath.
R.R.350, a sand-castable high temperature alloy, was used
In terms of composition, Y alloy typically contains 4% of copper and 2% of nickel. R.R. alloys reduce each of these by half to 2% and 1%, and 1% of iron is introduced.
So in comparison with the Pawl, we see that it’s composition in not a Y-alloy in the Hiduminium alloy family. The material used in the Pawl is an “aircraft structural grade aluminum alloy“, but it is not in common use as far as I can determine.
The copper percentage used, and the other alloying elements tells us that the material selection of this part migrated towards the need for ease of machining and finishing. And a look at the complex shape of this part, with curved, and convex surfaces, reinforces this conclusion. This part was cast, and then machined to exacting tolerances to match it’s complex geometry.
This particular grade of material is designed for high temperature applications. And since it is designed to pivot inside a mechanical mechanism, it appears that it is associated with either an engine component or landing gear.
So at least we know what it is not. It is not a hammer or utility part from a tractor. These parts tend to be made out of steel, or iron.
And we know what it is; it is a part used in an aircraft. It’s unique and complex geometry tells us that this was a structural component that fit within a mechanism with other precision parts. The presence of a machined hole tells us that there was a pivoting function of this item, and the presence of the second hone on the concave surface indicates that it mated with another part in some kind of sub-assembly geometry.
Abrasions on the surface
In 1995, a Romanian researcher, Florian Gheorghita, came across the artifact in the basement of the History Museum of Transylvania. The wedge was tested once more. This time in two different laboratories: the Archaeological Institute of Cluj-Napoca and an independent Swiss laboratory.
The tests confirmed the results reached by Fischinger and Niederkorn.
Gheorghita wrote in the Ancient Skies publication where he asked an aeronautical engineer about the artifact’s studies.
The engineer pointed out the configuration and hole drilled in the wedge and claimed that a pattern of abrasions and scratches on the metal led him to believe that it was part of an airplane landing gear.
For the Statists
Since this pawl is evidently an aircraft part, and the use of aluminum in aircraft began in the 1930’s, it is possible that this is part of a contemporaneous aircraft strut that somehow found it’s way to Romania over the years.
And somehow, it aged unusually rapidly, with surface corrosion of a substantial amount to a substantial degree by sandy soil.
And the design of the strut was somehow very elaborate and unusual for the aircraft pointing to some kind of advanced experimental design, for after all it wasn’t until the 1990’s that custom aluminum forgings of complex curved geometry started to find it’s way into mass production.
And it was truly a coincidence that it wound up in a batch of mastodon bones.
You can believe this narrative if it makes you feel better.
Conclusion
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck and tastes like a duck… it’s a duck. The only thing is that the particular species of a duck is new and unknown.
A machine, probably an aircraft, lost a part of it’s retractable landing gear around one million years ago near the Black Sea. The local proto-humanoids at that time, probably a species similar to Homo Habilis found the part and decided that it made a great hand tool. They used it to smash open the bones of the mastodons that they hunted at the time, and in the excitement of eating and engorging themselves forgot about the item and left it with the carcass.
Then, sometime in the 1970’s, the remains of the meal with the aluminum pawl was unearthed together during the construction of a road.
Who flew the aircraft, or what it was doing when it lost it’s part is unknown.
I do not know if it was “little green men”, articulated mastodons, or an unknown species of proto-humans who manufactured this part. What we do know is that they knew their metallurgy, they were able to design, and machine adeptly, and had the ability to fly in aircraft that encountered high temperature extremes.
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