Joseph R. Jochmans: traces of an impossible history
Gears made of... stone, pipes, electrical devices, cyclopean statues, whole ships are one of the greatest mysteries in history. Some claim that some of these artifacts have already appeared in bulk from excavations, drillings, caves and mines in various parts of the world. The zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson called them OOPArts, i.e. "Out Of Place Artifacts", which should not exist there.
They are often embedded directly in the rock, in geological layers hundreds of millions or even billions of years old, long before the appearance of man.
In various books and Internet sites you can find lists of these finds: coins, figurines, vases, a hammer, dinosaur figurines. They are always the same, at most a dozen, generally because they are mentioned in the old mystery books by Charles Fort or some similar publication.
Usually, the only ones who deal with them are the "Creationists" who take the Bible literally, and who therefore consider them simply remains of men like us, who lived before the Universal Flood: since the Flood would have upset everything, the Creationists do not recognize the dating based on geological layers, and give these objects an age of just a few thousand years, or at most tens of thousands.
These findings could be seen in a different light, based on a theory formulated by Adam Frank, astrophysicist at the University of Rochester, and Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a center specializing in environmental problems. According to Frank and Schmidt, we may not be the first intelligent inhabitants of the Earth, but we may have been preceded by a whole series of non-human creatures, perhaps as physically different from us as arthropods, and with some genetic code totally different from DNA. Although perhaps possessing tentacles instead of hands, these creatures would likely have founded technological civilizations comparable to ours, consuming resources and leaving behind the same kind of pollution.
It is precisely the pollutants that could reveal its existence. In an essay that appeared in May 2018 in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the two scientists state that
"Some specific traces would be unique, specifically synthetic molecules and plastic. The long-term fate of plastic in sediments is unclear, but the possibility that it will persist and remain detectable for a very long time is high. The element Plutonium-244 (with a lifespan of hundreds of millions of years) would be perceptible for a long time as a result of a nuclear catastrophe. There are no natural sources of plutonium, except supernovae."
So far, no pre-human plastic molecules or plutonium atoms have been found ... but then again, no one has looked for them.
Jochmans' list
There have been persons who have come across more concrete evidence of these very remote civilisations. It is said that science fiction anticipated everything, but as far as I know, there is only one science fiction story on this theme, and that is The Star Below, published in 1968 by Damon Knight.
In this story, a boy from a primitive tribe slips into a cave and finds a colossal storehouse of evidence of a very advanced lost civilization, such as a jug that fills itself with water and a talking and sentient box, which causes visions to appear. Unfortunately, the OOPArts found to date appear to be less spectacular than those imagined in the story... but just as enigmatic and inexplicable.
The only one to have compiled a systematic list was the American writer Joseph R. Jochmans, who unfortunately died of heart problems about ten years ago. His list was much longer than those currently available on the Web, and included as many as 220 artifacts and their imprints left in the rock, starting from remote human antiquity... around 10,000 years ago... up to hundreds of millions or even billions of years, before life as we know it developed on Earth. Furthermore, since many of the finds refer to multiple or even enormous quantities of objects, the total number of OOPArts could even be incalculable! Each was dated based on geology. His complete texts, sold by mail, are no longer available, but another scholar (despite not being interested in the topic) told me that the previews put on the Internet by Jochmans to pique curiosity are still partly traceable through the archive site and its “Wayback Machine,” even if it's just as tiring an undertaking as digging into the Earth itself.
The list of OOPArts definitely before man begins with finely worked stones that came to the surface or from enormous depths, in the most disparate places.
In November 1829, near Philadelphia, the American Journal of Science and Arts reports that a block of marble was extracted: when they cut it into slabs, they found a rectangular cavity inside of about 4 by 2 centimeters. In it there were in relief two tiny and perfectly geometric letters, I and U. Jochmans dates them back to the Cambrio-Ordovician, with 500-600 million years on their back.
The periodical "The Geologist" of April 1862 reported that a perfect sphere of chalk had been found in coal in France.
"As for the rock in which it was found, it can be said that it is perfectly virgin, and does not show the slightest trace of any ancient exploitation. The roof of the quarry was equally intact in that place, and no cracks could be seen in it, nor any other cavity from which it could be supposed that this ball had fallen from above."
Jochmans also attributes it to 50 million years. The compilation of detailed texts was interrupted by his disappearance.
From Jochmans' remaining notes, however, we learn that obsidian cones and cylinders, of unknown purpose and believed by Jochmans to be 520 million years old, corresponding to the Cambrian period, appeared in Greenland in 1896; metallic geometric shapes appeared in Jordan near Amman (Silurian period, 440 million years) and an immense number of finely decorated octahedrons were found in the Yukon, Canada, in 1933.
On these, he had time to explain something more:
"A Close examination shows that the octahedral surfaces are metallic, and under the microscope the metal appears deliberately carved and polished, with tool marks still visible. Furthermore, very few of the octahedrons look the same. All of them are less than an inch and a half tall and wide, yet their six points, twelve edges or eight faces have curious additions and subtractions, which are uniformly repeated. There are strange metallic protuberances, stars, notches, beveled tips or stubs, holes and faceted edges... all made according to a specific design. Tests performed on the unknown metal show that the artifacts conduct electricity and are partially magnetic. But what on earth could they be used for?"
Unlikely findings
The first to discover the tiny objects embedded in the gneiss was a sled driver, a certain Slim Williams, who gave some of them to the Smithsonian Institution. There is no longer any trace of these, but Williams had the good sense to keep others for himself. Furthermore, the small objects were scattered over such a large area that they were found by many other people: a Canadian horse guard named Arthur B. Thornthwaite, geologist Hugh Bostock, and various explorers, until they found their way to National Geographic magazine in March 1935.
Of the enormous number of specimens recovered, most have been lost, but some are reportedly kept at the Institute of Geographical Exploration at Harvard University, and in private collections. Jochmans dates them back to the Hadean period, 3.9 billion years ago.
In 1572, a 15 centimeter long iron nail was found inside a boulder broken by a hammer in Peru. Iron was unknown to the natives, and Jochmans states that it was 75,000 to 100,000 years old.
In 1826, in Ohio, at about 30 meters deep, an iron ax still stuck in a tree trunk was dug up from a well.
In 1844, another very ancient nail was found in the sandstone of a quarry near Kingoodie, Scotland. The Illinois Springfield Republican reported in 1851 about yet another nail found in California.
“Hiram de Witt, of this city, who recently returned from California, brought with him a piece of gold-bearing quartz, about the size of a man's fist. On Thanksgiving Day he took it out to show it to a friend, when it fell to the floor and split open. Near the center of the mass, an iron nail 5 centimeters long was discovered, firmly embedded in the quartz and slightly corroded. He was entirely straight and had a perfect head. Who made this nail? When was it planted in still uncrystallized quartz? How did it end in California? If the head of that nail could talk, we would know more about American history than we probably ever will."
A long history stretching back to the Jurassic, given that Jochmans gives it 150 million years. A year later, in 1852, The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland described the discovery, in a piece of hard coal, of something that looked like a drill bit.
In 1865, it was the turn of a 2-inch screw that ended up in a piece of feldspar in Treasure City, Nevada. The grooves were still clearly visible. Jochmans believes it is 20 million years old, dating back to the Miocene.
«Another mystery arose from the Illinois subsoil»
wrote Jochmans.
"In 1851, in Whiteside County, the drilling of another well brought up from a layer of sand 40 meters deep two copper artifacts: what looked like a hook, and a ring».
Jochmans gives it “only” 200,000 years of antiquity.
The Mecca of OOPART
One of the most studied and cited metal objects incorporated directly into fossil coal is a small piece of iron, erroneously called "Gurlt's cube" but in reality almost completely shapeless, which measures 67 by 67 by 47 millimeters and weighs approximately 785 grams, discovered in the autumn of 1885 in a foundry in Vocklabruck, Austria. It is also one of the few underground mysteries still on display in a museum. On November 11, 1886, it was first mentioned in Nature. Initially believed to be a meteorite, the only thing that is known for sure is that it is artificial, perhaps made with a mold... but for what purpose, we cannot imagine. Unlike the finds mentioned above, it is too irregular to have been part of a mechanical device, or for any other practical use. Jochmans dates it to the Tertiary period... 60 million years.
Of a more regular shape, however, would be an iron bar also found in coal in Scotland in 1852. But the true mecca of OOParts incorporated into hard coal is the United States, where
"An 1883 issue of the American Antiquarian reported the discovery of a small object metallic found embedded in Upper Oligocene coal, dated 30 million years old. More specifically, the approximately 1 inch long specimen was made of an unrecognizable but extremely durable metal alloy, and looked like a very small cylindrical “cup” closed at one end and open at the other, fitting perfectly on a thumb human. Ohioans called it “Eve's thimble,” and its imprint in the coal in which it was encapsulated is said to have survived for a few decades before disintegrating from over-handling. Unfortunately, the prehistoric "thimble" has also disappeared, and all that remains of it is the original official account and a few newspaper clippings from the time."
Also found in the coal was a small round iron vase, between 12 and 15 centimeters in diameter, narrower at the base and wider at the top. The discoverer, Frank J. Kenwood, left a sworn account in 1948:
“While working at the Municipal Power Plant in Thomas, Oklahoma, in 1912, I came across a solid block of coal too large to use. I broke it with a sledgehammer. This iron vessel fell from the center, leaving the imprint, or mold, in a piece of the coal. My colleague Jim Stull witnessed the coal crushing, and saw the jar fall out. I traced the source of the coal, and discovered that it came from the mines in Wilburton, Oklahoma."
After many backs and forths, the find was only announced by the Creation Research Society Quarterly in 1971. Jochmans obviously declared that it belongs to the Carboniferous, 320 million years old.
In 1937 another woman found a teaspoon in coal.
In 1944, in West Virginia, a bell with a long handle, made of an unusual brass alloy, emerged from the coal. It is still in the possession of the discoverer Newton Anderson.
Suspicious footprints
In February 1954, Coal Age magazine revealed that the previous year, in a coal field in Wattis, Utah, miners had found nothing strange... except that once again, as in the case of the French quarrymen of 1820, had been preceded. Someone else had dug tunnels a couple of meters high and 2.5 kilometers wide under a mountain. On the surface there were no longer any traces of the entrances: erosion had erased them.
"According to the testimony of mining engineers, the coal was of such antiquity that it was cured until it became useless, no longer capable of burning or producing heat. According to the miners, there were not only tunnels but also underground rooms."
The book Dead Men's Secrets, by Jonathan Gray (1988), mentions the discovery, in today's Dominican Republic, of an ancient gold mine 4800 meters deep, more than the maximum reached by those today.
In another Illinois coal mine, in 2007, fossils of a 300-million-year-old fern forest were discovered... completely ordinary ferns, except for one small detail: someone had pruned them into regular shapes , as we do with hedges.
“In 1992,”
Jochmans wrote
“an annual report from the Texas State Geological Survey described a bizarre discovery made at Dinosaur Flats, an area featuring fossil beds and saurian tracks sinking into 70-million-year-old Late Cretaceous limestone. The “oddity” in question is a series of regularly spaced toothed wheel impressions, running along impressions of three-pronged dinosaur legs, over the course of a few meters. The serrations are precisely spaced apart, just under 20 centimeters apart, too perfect to be of natural origin. The micro-layering of the surface also reveals that the sauropod had crossed that place first... and that the toothed wheel followed closely behind it, parallel to the animal's steps, as if chasing it. Was the mysterious gear part of a large, unknown mechanical automaton that was hunting the dinosaur? However, the clear and regular imprints of its teeth are enough to indicate that something metallic was moving across the plains... and could only be the product of a mechanized society."
After all, the robot's creators may have considered sauroids to be an excellent source of cheap protein!
Citing unspecified Russian scientists, the book Gods of Air and Darkness, by Richard A. Mooney (1975) states that
"Some discoveries of dinosaur skeletons seem to indicate, judging from the nature of the fractures and the position of the bones of the skeleton, that they were killed with the use of high explosives."
Later, when the first humans appeared on Earth, they may have come across some wreckage of pre-human robots from millions of years earlier.
«In 1888»
continues Jochmans,
"American and European scientific journals reported the discovery along the Santa Ana River valley in Ventura County, California, of a dozen stone gears with an average diameter of 16.5 centimeters. Their geological position gave them almost 60,000 years of age. The curious thing about these specimens is that their rough teeth fit together, and appear to imitate authentic cogwheel mechanisms. Did the unknown artisans of Santa Ana come into contact with more advanced technology that existed before them on the planet?”
The Arizona Ball
Other of the most incredible stories include those of the unearthing of jewelry and other precious objects, such as a sphere of 99% pure silver, 22 centimeters in diameter, which turned up in Globe, Arizona, in 1875. Legend has it that it was precisely this "globe" that gave the town its name. The area was famous for its rich silver mines, but the peculiarity of this sphere is that on its surface was engraved a world map from 45 million years ago, dating back to the Eocene! And today, the Globe's symbol is indeed a planisphere...
According to Jochmans as usual,
"drawings that appeared in the newspapers of the time show that the continents of the world were depicted on the sphere... but not like today... and tiny figures of long-extinct animals placed in their respective habitats. The western coast of North America was shown before the Rocky Mountains rose. Lakes occupied Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. The southeastern United States appeared underwater, but New England jutted out into the Atlantic and was joined by Newfoundland, Labrador, and Greenland. What is now the Gulf of Mexico reached as far west as Arizona, where the silver was found. That area must have been on a coast. Both the Arctic and Antarctica appeared to be totally ice-free. South America did not appear much different from today, except for the fact that it was separated from Central America by a large body of water. Africa and the Arabian Peninsula were joined together, and in place of today's Mediterranean there was what geologists call the Tethys Sea, which flowed directly from the Atlantic into the Indian Ocean. (...) The Himalayas were visibly absent. Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Japan together extended deep into the Pacific, while Australia and the East Indies formed a single land mass. (...) The animals were mainly small mammals such as the ancestors of bears and elephants, as well as monkeys and other primates. Also making an appearance were what looked like tapirs, rhinos, camels, rodents, including a tiny fingered Eohippo, the ancestor of all existing equines. There was a single figure of a Gastornis, a large flightless bird. Creatures bearing some resemblance to dolphins and whales were depicted walking on land. They were chased by creodonts, long-toothed carnivores, and by cynodictis, the ancestors of the modern dog. There were two notable examples of strange synchronicities. First, in the submerged waters of what is now the southeastern US, a whale-like creature, not unlike the extinct Basilosaurus, was immortalized. In May 1983, just such a fossil was discovered near Savannah, Georgia, in the same location as that prehistoric cetacean. In South America, where Peru is located today, the silver globe featured what looked like a large penguin. In 2005... 130 years after the globe was unearthed... Peruvian geologists found the fossil of a giant penguin, which once stood over 1.5 meters tall. An Arizona newspaper of that period placed a value of $12,000 on the silver globe. (...). Unfortunately, the object disappeared around the turn of the century, sold to a private collector whose name or domicile remains unknown to this day."
Gold findings
On 22 June 1844 the Times of London revealed that stone quarrymen had unearthed a thread of gold in the rock also in Scotland, two meters deep. Jochmans gives it 320-340 million years.
Fifty years later, another piece of wire was extracted from sandstone in Australia, while in 1957, in Africa, more were found embedded in granite.
According to what was reported on September 13, 2002 by the Russian newspaper Pravda, in 1977 more threads were found in a sample of Antarctic ice dating back to 20,000 years ago.
"The piece of ice soon melted, and we could see golden threads about 2 cm long and the thickness of a human hair. The “hair” was made of some metal, were all the same length and were cut very carefully. The Institute of Crystallography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences conducted a test of the filaments, and concluded that the material was an alloy of gold and silver. It should be noted that in 1984 a report appeared in the press that US researchers had also independently found gold threads in the Antarctic ice."
Another of the most cited finds was announced on June 11, 1891, by the Morrisonville Times of Illinois.
"A curious object was unearthed by Mrs. S. W. Culp on Tuesday morning last. While she was breaking a block of coal, she discovered, when it opened in two, embedded in a circular shape a gold chain of about 25 cm in length, of ancient and singular workmanship. At first Mrs. Culp thought that the chain had been accidentally dropped into the coal, but when she set about picking it up, the idea that it had recently fallen was quickly rendered false. The block had split almost in the middle, and the circular position of the chain placed the two ends close to each other, and when the block split, the central section of the chain became free, while both ends remained incorporated in coal. The block of coal from which the chain was taken is supposed to come from the Taylorville or Pana mines and it is almost breath-taking to think of how many long ages the Earth spent forming, layer after layer, until the jewel to look at. The chain was made of 8 carat gold and weighed 124 grams."
Upon Mrs. Culp's death in 1959, the chain passed to a relative and can no longer be found.
Jochmans attributes it 250-320 million years, up to the Triassic.
Strikingly similar is a story from Beckley, West Virginia: in 1985, what emerged from the coal was a gold-plated necklace with alternating larger and smaller rings, and a clasp to close it.
125 million years old, from the middle of the Cretaceous, to conclude!
