Changes

== History of OOParts ==

== History of OOParts ==

The report in 1572 of a six-inch nail found in Peru and presented to the [[Viceroy]] of Peru as a gift<ref name=ta>"[http://www.bibleufo.com/embed.htm Embedded Anomalies: Evidence of Civilization Before the Accepted Creation Timeline]." ''[http://www.bibleufo.com/index.htm The Bible-UFO Connection],'' accessed March 31, 2008</ref> might be the oldest OOPart report on record. More than eighty OOParts have been alleged since then.

The report in 1572 of a six-inch nail found in Peru and presented to the [[Viceroy]] of Peru as a gift<ref name=ta>"[http://www.bibleufo.com/embed.htm Embedded Anomalies: Evidence of Civilization Before the Accepted Creation Timeline]." ''[http://www.bibleufo.com/index.htm The Bible-UFO Connection],'' accessed March 31, 2008</ref> might be the oldest OOPart report on record. More than eighty OOParts have been alleged since then.

== Types of OOParts ==

== Types of OOParts ==

# The Saqqara Bird, a seven-[[inch]] object, first thought to be a [[bird]] figurine, but then recognized as a model [[airplane]]. This was found in 1898 in the tomb of Pa-Di-Imen and dates to 200 BC.<ref name=top10/><ref name=s8int>"[http://www.s8int.com/ OOParts and Ancient High Technology: Evidence of Noah's Flood]?" Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref>

# The Saqqara Bird, a seven-[[inch]] object, first thought to be a [[bird]] figurine, but then recognized as a model [[airplane]]. This was found in 1898 in the tomb of Pa-Di-Imen and dates to 200 BC.<ref name=top10/><ref name=s8int>"[http://www.s8int.com/ OOParts and Ancient High Technology: Evidence of Noah's Flood]?" Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref>

# An Inca pendant, dated from 500 to 800 AD, that turns out to be a model of a high-speed aircraft, possibly a jet. More remarkably, the object's apparent rudder fin bears an engraved [[Hebrew]] or [[Aramaic]] letter beth.<ref name=top10/><ref name=s8int/>

# An Inca pendant, dated from 500 to 800 AD, that turns out to be a model of a high-speed aircraft, possibly a jet. More remarkably, the object's apparent rudder fin bears an engraved [[Hebrew]] or [[Aramaic]] letter beth.<ref name=top10/><ref name=s8int/>

# The Crystal Skull of Lubaantum, a 7-inch-long skull cut from a single piece of clear quartz found among Mayan ruins in 1927. The artisan who fashioned it evidently cut the quartz ''against the axis of crystallization'', a feat no modern jeweler could possibly accomplish without shattering the quartz into fine dust. Moreover, the artisan cannot have used any metal tools, because his work bears no scratch marks. Analysts have concluded that the production of this artifact would have required 300 man-hours using any conceivable modern method.<ref name=top10/>

# The Crystal Skull of Lubaantum ([[Belize]]), a 7-inch-long skull cut from a single piece of clear quartz found among Mayan ruins in 1927. The artisan who fashioned it evidently cut the quartz ''against the axis of crystallization'', a feat no modern jeweler could possibly accomplish without shattering the quartz into fine dust. Moreover, even if the artisan could have accomplished the against-the-grain cut, he cannot have used any metal tools, because his work bears no scratch marks. Analysts have concluded that the production of this artifact would have required 300 man-hours using any conceivable modern method&mdash;again, ''if'' anyone could have cut the quartz against the grain without shattering it. (One must also wonder what sort of culture would see something as morbid as a skull as an article of jewelry, much less exert such technological effort to produce such an object.)<ref name=top10/>

# The Cabrera Stones. These are 20,000 stones that appear to be illustrations from a medical textbook. The surgical techniques depicted in these illustrations rival or even far surpass any surgical techniques in use today, and even include encephalic transplantation.<ref name=top10/>

# The Cabrera Stones. These are 20,000 stones that appear to be illustrations from a medical textbook. The surgical techniques depicted in these illustrations rival or even far surpass any surgical techniques in use today, and even include encephalic transplantation.<ref name=top10/>

# The Bullet-Punctured Skull of Zambia, a human cranium, supposedly of the paleolithic era, that bears evidence that the person involved was shot to death with a rifle. Local geological evidence indicates (by uniformitarian standards) that the skull is 38,000 years old.<ref name=top10/>

# The Bullet-Punctured Skull of Zambia, a human cranium, supposedly of the paleolithic era, that bears evidence that the person involved was shot to death with a rifle. Local geological evidence indicates (by uniformitarian standards) that the skull is 38,000 years old.<ref name=top10/>

# The Wonderstone Spheroids, now numbering 200 or more, found in a silver mine in South Africa. They are of a nickel-steel alloy that cannot be terrestrial or meteoric. A museum curator has observed one of these spheroids rotating within its setting, apparently under its own power. Yet the miners who excavated these spheroids found them in a stratum that ought to be 3 billion years old.<ref name=top10/>

# The Wonderstone Spheroids, now numbering 200 or more, found in a silver mine in South Africa. They are of a nickel-steel alloy that cannot have occurred outside a laboratory or a steel mill. Nor could they be meteoric; the composition does not match that of any meteorite thus far found. A museum curator has observed one of these spheroids rotating within its setting, apparently under its own power. Yet the miners who excavated these spheroids found them in a stratum that, according to [[uniformitarianism]], ought to be 3 billion years old.<ref name=top10/>

# A brass bell with an iron clapper, found in a lump of coal. Uniformitarians commonly insist that all the coal in the world formed 280 to 300 million years ago.<ref name=disc>"[http://www.discoverynews.us/OOPART.html Ooparts (Out of Place Artifacts)]." ''Discovery News''. Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref>

# A brass bell with an iron clapper, found in a lump of coal. Uniformitarians commonly insist that all the coal in the world formed 280 to 300 million years ago.<ref name=disc>"[http://www.discoverynews.us/OOPART.html Ooparts (Out of Place Artifacts)]." ''Discovery News''. Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref>

# An iron pot found within a lump of coal in Thomas, Oklahoma. The same consideration applies to this object as applies to the bell mentioned above.<ref name=disc/>

# An iron pot found within a lump of coal in Thomas, Oklahoma. The same consideration applies to this object as applies to the bell mentioned above.<ref name=disc/>

=== Human fossils ===

=== Human fossils ===

Fossilized human remains, especially any such remains found buried in [[deep time]], are among the most striking evidences against the uniformitarian model.

Fossilized human remains, especially any such remains found buried in [[deep time]], are among the most striking evidences against the uniformitarian model.

# A fossilized human finger found in the Cretaceous Walnut Formation of the Commanche Peak limestone deposit.<ref name=disc/><ref name=cem1>Lines, David. "[http://75.125.60.6/~creatio1/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28 The Fossilized Human Finger]." [[Creation Evidence Museum]] online, 1995. Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref> The ''in situ'' provenance of the finger is lacking.

# A fossilized human finger found in the Cretaceous Walnut Formation of the Commanche Peak limestone deposit.<ref name=disc/><ref name=cem1>Lines, David. "[http://75.125.60.6/~creatio1/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28 The Fossilized Human Finger]." [[Creation Evidence Museum]] online, 1995. Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref> The ''in situ'' provenance of the finger is lacking. But if this object proves genuine, then it might represent long-sought remains of a casualty of the [[Great Flood]].

# Skulls and other bones found within coal.<ref name=s8int/><ref name=conrad>Conrad, Ed. "[http://www.edconrad.com/oldascoal/index.html Man as Old as Coal]." Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref>

# Skulls and other bones found within coal.<ref name=s8int/><ref name=conrad>Conrad, Ed. "[http://www.edconrad.com/oldascoal/index.html Man as Old as Coal]." Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref>

# Malachite Man, consisting of the remains of ten individuals in a supposed 140-million-year-old stratum. Some of the bones have been partially petrified with malachite.<ref name=malachite>Patton, Don. "[http://www.bible.ca/tracks/malachite-man.htm Official World Site Malachite Man]." ''[http://www.bible.ca/bible.htm The Interactive Bible].'' Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref>

# Malachite Man, consisting of the remains of ten individuals in a supposed 140-million-year-old stratum. Some of the bones have been partially petrified with malachite, a peculiar greenish mineral. Petrified human bones would be even more likely to represent Flood casualties.<ref name=malachite>Patton, Don. "[http://www.bible.ca/tracks/malachite-man.htm Official World Site Malachite Man]." ''[http://www.bible.ca/bible.htm The Interactive Bible].'' Accessed March 31, 2008.</ref>

=== Dinosaur-human cohabitation ===

=== Dinosaur-human cohabitation ===

== Discussion ==

== Discussion ==

To conceive of anything being "out of place" requires a concept of the "proper place" of any technological artifact. For most OOParts now known, that concept depends on [[geology|geological]] [[uniformitarianism]] and the related concept of [[deep time]], because these artifacts were recovered from a geologic stratum allegedly millions of years old. For others, the concept of "technological place" depends on the widely-held concept of the linear development of cultures. Thus, for example, the [[Egypt]]ians are not supposed to have developed any of the flight sciences, while the Saqqara Bird suggests that they, or else some other civilization that once held the land where Egypt now stands, did&mdash;centuries before [[Leonardo da Vinci]] would speculate on building a flying machine, let alone before [[Orville Wright|Orville]] and [[Wilbur Wright]] would demonstrate their own prototype.

For a complete discussion on the possible significance of OOParts, see [[Essay: Out-of-place Artifacts, ET's, and the Great Flood]].

 

OOParts that violate the linear-development paradigm is not unexpected, for the history of the world is replete with examples of cultures conquering other cultures while ''not'' preserving all of the technological knowledge that the conquered had developed or amassed. For example, the fall of the [[Ancient Rome|Roman Empire]].

 

The finding of OOParts in deep-time-associated geologic strata is another matter. Only three possibilities exist, and each possibility has its devoted champions:

 

 

 

Concerning extraterrestrial scouts, that begs the question of where such scouts could come from. Recent evidence suggests that the [[Earth]] and the [[solar system]] are ''very'' special places, that almost had to be [[anthropic principle|designed with human life in mind]]. More to the point, many of the artifacts found do represent a stunningly advanced technology. Others, however, represent a technology no more advanced than that of any civilization in existence as of the early twenty-first century, or even the middle twentieth. Their presence among the perhaps government-issue equipment of soldiers of a culture advanced enough to have interstellar space travel would certainly beg explanation.

 

This leaves the third possibility, that the artifacts found in geologic strata are in fact clues to the technology of pre-[[Great Flood|Flood]] [[human|man]]. If one abandons [[uniformitarianism]], then one can readily interpret the entire geologic column as [[flood geology|flood silt]]. The artifacts then would represent clues to the highest level of technological advancement that [[Noah]] had to work with when he designed and built his [[Noah's Ark|Ark]]. That level might be far higher than [[Bible]] scholars have previously assumed, and would go far to answering many of the technological objections that some have raised to the story of how anyone could even build a wooden cargo ship more than 165 [[meter]]s long, much less how such a ship could ride through the onslaught of a 1.6-kilometer-high wall of [[water]] and then stay afloat for more than a year.

 

Early post-Flood cultures did not, of course, develop with more than a fraction of the technologies that OOParts represent. Some technologies, like the one responsible for the crystal skull of Belize, remain far beyond the capabilities of modern civilizations. To answer this objection, the novelist Shane Johnson, in his novel ''[[Ice (novel)|Ice]]'', reminded his readers that most end-users of any given technology would never be able to reinvent those technologies even if asked or somehow forced by circumstance.<ref name=Ice>Johnson, Shane. ''Ice: The Greatest Truths Hide in the Darkest Shadows.'' Colorado Springs, Colorado: Waterbrook Press, 2002. 395 pages, paperback. ISBN 1578565480. The plot-theme of this novel includes the discovery of what would, if found, be the most incredible OOPart to date.</ref> The Global Flood destroyed every civilization then extant, and in the process destroyed or buried deep all traces of antediluvian technology&mdash;and the Bible nowhere credits Noah, [[Shem]], [[Ham]], or [[Japheth]] with any particular technological prowess outside of their obvious signal achievement in shipbuilding.

== References ==

== References ==