Out-of-place objects
Objects whose shape or setting has been read as out of their time, beginning with a small wooden bird from Saqqara that a Cairo doctor called a model glider in 1969.
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The Coso artifact: a spark plug in a geode, 1961
The Coso artifact is a stone found in 1961 in the Coso Mountains of California that held a ceramic cylinder, a metal shaft and a six-sided casing. A finder's letter quoted an unnamed geologist dating it to at least 500,000 years. Collectors later identified it as a 1920s Champion spark plug, confirmed in 2018. This article follows the claim, the identification, and the date nobody has explained.
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The Saqqara bird: a model glider?
The Saqqara bird is a small wooden carving of a bird, found at Saqqara in 1898 and dated to about 200 BC, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In 1969 Khalil Messiha argued that its upright tail and straight wings made it a model glider. This article sets out his case, the replicas and the 2023 airflow study, and what only the object itself can settle.