Paranormal researcher Ivan T. Sanderson once coined the term Out-Of-Place Artifact, literally "inappropriate artifacts" (OOPArt), referring to all objects discovered during archaeological excavations, the characteristics of which do not correspond to the time or place of their origin.
The existence of such objects prompts some to believe that the technological level of civilizations of the past is grossly underestimated or that they, for example, have been in contact with the aliens responsible for creating these objects. However, this point of view is not generally accepted, and the status of the OOPArt object is still controversial.
At the same time, some discoveries previously attributed to OOPArts, such as the Antikythera mechanism, led to a reassessment of the technological capabilities of our ancestors and a better understanding of their way of life.
Most misplaced artifacts are ascribed to the wrong function, and a form of cultural snobbery is also common, leading to the idea that "our ancestors could not have created these items without outside help."
1. Car candle from Olancha
On February 13, 1961, Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxi, and Mike Mixell, owners of a mineral store in Olancha, California (in the Coso area), were collecting quartz geodes in the surrounding mountains.
They found several stones 6 miles northeast of the village. When Mike Mixell smashed one of the stones in half, he discovered that there was a cylindrical object inside, resembling an engine spark plug, instead of a crystalline cavity typical of geodes.
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The cylinder was made of a hard, white, porcelain-like material with a two millimeter thick metal wire in the center.
The stone was examined by a geologist who said that it took at least 500,000 years for the stone to take its current shape. The artifact was also studied by creationist Ron Kahle, who took an X-ray. The latter showed that one end of the object had a kind of spring or propeller.
2. Drop disks
"Dropa" are ancient people who lived in the remote areas of the Bayan Har mountains, located between the Chinese regions of Qinghai, Sichuan and Tibet. Dropa, in accordance with the versions, received some knowledge from aliens, whose ship crashed on Earth.
The drop left artifacts in the form of stone discs, which had certain properties.
In 1947, Professor Caryl Robin-Evans of Oxford University bought several drop discs.
Then Robin-Evans went on an expedition to Tibet, where he met the 14th Dalai Lama. Accompanied by his guides, he reached the Bayan Mountains, where he found a tribe of troglodytes, people of small stature (an average of 1.5 m) with hypertrophied heads. Having won the trust of the natives, he was able to learn their language and meet with their leader. He reported that his ancestors flew from Sirius, but their ship crashed on Earth in 1014 AD.
The drop case was highly influential and is often cited by ancient astronaut theorists. However, its implausibility and lack of convincing evidence make most ufologists and scientists consider it a hoax.
3. Salzburg cube
In the fall of 1885, a strange discovery was made at the Braun foundry in Schondorf, Upper Austria: after breaking a lump of coal (tertiary lignite) mined in Wolfsegg that was supposed to be used for smelting furnaces, a worker discovered a strange piece of metal.
It weighed 785 grams and has the general shape of a rectangular parallelepiped 64 x 64 x 47 mm, with four nearly flat edges and two convex rounded sides. A deep groove surrounded the artifact.
In 1886, Dr. Adolf Gurlt, a mining engineer, studied a cube. He found out that the object was iron and covered with a thin layer of rust. Around the same time, articles appeared in Nature and Astronomy about the object, in which it was described as a fossil meteorite.
In 1966 and 1967, the cube underwent electron beam analysis at the Vienna Museum of Natural History, which found no trace of nickel, chromium or cobalt in the iron to indicate it was a meteorite. Due to the low magnesium content, some geologists thought it might be cast iron.
French science fiction writer Jacques Bergier was of the opinion that the Salzburg cube was of extraterrestrial origin and was used by aliens to collect information about life on Earth in order to track its development.
4. Balls of Klerksdorp
Klerksdorp balls are metal objects of various sizes and shapes, from slightly flattened spheres to discs, usually with a radius of one and a half to ten centimeters. Many of these spheres have grooves or notches.
In the late 1970s, miners regularly found these balls in the Wonderstone silver mine near Ottosdal, South Africa, so hundreds of balls were brought to the surface. However, the layer from which they were mined, consisting of pyrophyllite, dated back to 2.8 billion years, a date long before the appearance of modern humans and even the first mammals (about 200 million years).
The scientific study of these balls was carried out by the geologist Pavel W. Heinrich, who wrote several articles about them. According to his analysis of the objects, some are composed of hematite, while others are of wollastonite mixed with small amounts of hematite and goethite. He also cut some balls and found out that they have a radial structure. According to other studies, most of the balls are pyrite.
Klerksdorp balls are sometimes credited with incredible characteristics: they are said to be composed of an alloy that does not exist in nature, that they have an abnormally high hardness, that they contain a spongy substance that disintegrates on contact with air, slowly begins to spin on their own even when absence of any external influences.
According to the supporters of the hypothesis of the artificial origin of these balls, they were created by an extinct civilization, which used them as: currency, talismans, information carriers, works of art, etc.
5. Ica stones
The Ica Stones is an extensive collection of engraved stones found in the Ica region of Peru since the 1960s, some of which depict dinosaurs or people with advanced technology.
Ica Stone (Cabrera Collection) showing a wide variety of dinosaurs: we can see a sauropod (left), a carnosaur (top left), a pteranodon (top, not very visible in the photo), a stegosaurus (top right), a Triceratops (middle), and an unidentified dinosaur (down below).
Ica stone (Cabrera collection) depicting a triceratops ruled by a man.
Popularized by Javier Cabrera, the Ica stones caused a lot of controversy, but today they are considered a hoax by most experts. However, they are still often cited as evidence by creationists and ancient astronaut theorists.
The Ica stones are very often associated with figurines of the Acambaro, another series of Mexican "misplaced artifacts" depicting dinosaurs and accompanied by a story similar to the Ica stones. They are also associated with the geoglyphs of the Nazca plateau, located near Ica. The Nazca lines are depicted on some of the stones.
Ica stone (Cabrera collection) depicting two people fighting against dinosaurs.
The drawings on some stones are sometimes very difficult to make out, and their interpretation largely depends on the imagination of the observer. Thus, scenes of "surgical operations" can be viewed as acts of cannibalism; "Flying cars" look more like birds than real cars, etc.
There are currently about 11,000 stones in the collection of the Cabrera Museum in Ica. Counting other items from various collections, exported abroad or sold to tourists, Cabrera estimated the total number of stones at 15,000 pieces.
6. Dogu
Dogu (translated from Japanese - "clay idol") - these are terracotta figurines of the Neolithic era, presumably depicting humanoid aliens and animals: horses, dogs …
They have been found in the northern and eastern regions of Japan. Dogu's age is estimated to be between 10,000 BC. and 300 BC. Is an era that roughly corresponds to the Late Stone and Bronze Ages (the Japanese call it the Jōmon period).
Dogu are presented in quite a variety of styles. Most of them are round and squat, very stylized. They have legs and arms. Some have feminine features: wide hips, slender waists and breasts, while others have large bulging eyes, the pupil of which is a slit.
Some proponents of the ancient astronaut theory have hypothesized that the dogu depict extraterrestrial beings who visited Earth during the Neolithic. To support this theory, they point to similarities between the dog figurine and other very similar ancient ceramic figurines found in other parts of the world, especially the Valdivian culture in Ecuador. However, this striking similarity could be a mere coincidence, or it could be due to ancient contacts between Japan and South America.