"Misplaced Artifact" is a term that serves as a name for prehistoric objects found in various places around the world. These items indicate a level of technological advancement out of step with the time they were made. "Misplaced artifacts" often baffle conservative scientists and delight enterprising researchers open to alternative theories and lively debate.
The spheres found in mines in South Africa have intrigued researchers for decades.
According to Michael Cremo and other researchers of prehistoric cultures, these spheres provide further evidence that intelligent life existed on Earth much earlier than mainstream science believes.
Cremo has traveled the world collecting information on "misplaced artifacts." He summarized his findings in the popular book Forbidden Archeology: The Secret History of the Human Race.
In 1984, while studying the spheres, he contacted Rolf Marks, curator of the museum in Klerksdorp, South Africa, where the spheres were kept. Marx said that the spheres are 2.8 billion years old, they have a very hard surface and a fibrous structure inside. He considers these areas to be strange and mysterious.
Marx wrote: “There are no scientific publications about the spheres, but the facts are as follows. They were found in pyrophyllite, which is being mined near the small town of Ottosdal in the Western Transvaal. Pyrophyllite is a fairly soft secondary mineral, its hardness is only 3 on the Mohs scale, it was formed as a result of sediment deposition 2.8 billion years ago.
These spheres have a fibrous structure inside the shell, which is very hard and cannot be scratched even with steel. The Mohs scale got its name from Friedrich Mohs, who chose ten minerals to compare hardness, of which talc is the softest and diamond is the hardest.
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The Mohs scale hardness of steel is 6.5-7.5. Thus, the mysterious spheres are harder than steel.
Natural education?
Some believe that the spheres were formed naturally as a result of nodules - the compaction of mineral masses. Some of the Klerksdorp spheres are elliptical and rough around the center. However, others are very proportional, the grooves on them look so straight and precise that they are unlikely to have formed naturally, according to supporters of the theory that the spheres were created by intelligent beings.
In 2002, the Klerksdorp Museum posted on its website a letter from John Hund of Pittsburgh, South Africa. The allegations in the letter were not verified, and then the letter was removed from the site, says geologist Paul W. Heinrich. Hund argued that one of the areas was studied at the California Space Institute, scientists concluded that its proportions are "so precise that they are superior to their measuring instruments."
Heinrich does not believe that the South African spheres he studied are in perfect shape and proportion.
Mokuy Balls in Utah
Similar spheres were found in Utah, their age is about 2 million years. These are known as Mokui balls. Local legends say that the ancestors of the Hopi Indians played with these balls and left them as a message to their relatives that they were happy and everything was in order.
Mokui balls have a sandy interior and a hard surface of iron oxide. Heinrich's experiments with the Klerksdorp spheres showed that they were also made from a type of iron oxide - hematite. He discovered another ball from Klerksdorp, composed of wollastonite, hematite and geotite, a hydrated iron oxide.
Scientists who believe that all these spherical structures were formed naturally, offer different explanations. Dr. Curry Weber of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is studying microbes and says the spheres could have been created from the waste products of microbes.
Geologist Dave Crosby, who was conducting research in Utah where the Mokui balls were found, initially hypothesized that the meteorite impact produced molten spheres that then thickened sand particles.
Upon further investigation, he found no evidence of a meteorite impact, according to RocksandMinerals.com. Then he put forward the theory that rainwater washed out iron and other minerals, then they fell into groundwater. After passing through the groundwater, the ions gathered around the grains of sand, forming spheres.
Cremo and other scientists who consider such finds to be evidence of advanced prehistoric civilizations say scientists should be bolder and more open to facts that disprove dominant views.