5 (Allegedly) Alien Artifacts Found on Earth | Unveiled

5 (Allegedly) Alien Artifacts Found on Earth

Have aliens ever visited Earth? And if they have, did they leave anything behind?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re uncovering the most mysterious, allegedly extraterrestrial objects and artefacts ever found on this planet!

In archaeological circles, an out-of-place artefact is something which is discovered in an unusual or unexplained setting or context. This could mean that it’s an object which hints that a past civilization was more technologically advanced than previously thought… as with the Antikythera mechanism which revealed that the ancient Greeks had analogue computers. Or, it could be that something’s found in an unexpected location on the world map, suggesting that past civilizations and cultures previously thought to be separate were actually linked… as with the Maine penny, which ties the east coast of America to eleventh century Norse Vikings. There are some out-of-place artefacts, though, which are difficult to account for even if we revise what we thought we knew about history to explain them… leading some to claim that they could be not of this world at all.

One of the most famous (and contested) examples is the Roswell Rock. Found in 2004, the Roswell Rock is said (by believers) to be directly linked to the famous Roswell UFO incident back in 1947. It was actually found about twenty-five miles from the Roswell crash site, but this smooth stone has captured worldwide attention, mostly because of 1) the fact it’s magnetic, and 2) the perfect, astronomical markings on one side of it… showing what appears to be a couple crescent moons and some stars or planets. This same symbol has reportedly appeared in previous crop circles in the UK, too, and there are various claims of other rocks or objects found with the same or a similar design etched onto them. For many, the Roswell Rock could be a hoax, and just one of many copycat instances designed to fool the world… but some have labelled it smoking gun evidence that aliens are among us.

Another item which continues to spark debate with ufologists is the Wedge of Aiud. It was found in Romania in 1974, and because it was discovered buried close to some mastodon bones - and because the mastodon went extinct around 11,000 years ago - it was originally dated to be extremely old. But its apparent age didn’t make a whole lot of sense, because the wedge was also found to be made mostly of aluminium… and we only developed aluminium in the 1820s - long, long after the mastodons had died off! The general consensus, then, is that the wedge was actually dated incorrectly to begin with, and that it’s really a product of modern history rather than ancient times… but there remain some unanswered questions about how it could have come to be lodged so far beneath the ground so as to appear alongside millennia-old bones? For those more inclined to an “ancient aliens” line of argument, the wedge could actually be part of a landing apparatus on a long-lost alien ship.

The Wedge of Aiud isn’t on its own, either… as there have been countless, apparently inexplicable, usually metallic objects unearthed all over the world map. There’s what’s been called the UFO Tooth Wheel, for example, a small piece of (again) aluminium allegedly found embedded in a 300-million-year-old lump of coal in Vladivostok, Russia, in 2013. Quite how the relatively recent metal (seemingly from a relatively recent machine) came to be encased in a prehistoric rock formation is anyone’s guess... although the validity of this particular artifact has continually been called into question!

From far-eastern Russia to South America, though, where the so-called golden airplanes were discovered - as part of the Quimbaya artefacts haul, found in Colombia and dating back around 1,000 years. Most of the Quimbaya artefacts are small models depicting everyday things like animals, people and birds… but a few of them are seemingly of airplane-like machines, leading ancient alien theorists to claim that the Quimbaya civilization must have at one time encountered an extraterrestrial ship. Why else would they create these designs?

For many, though, the alleged alien artefacts only get really worthy of attention once there’s biological material involved. And perhaps the most famous example of this came via the Polonnaruwa meteorite - a space rock which allegedly fell in Sri Lanka, in December 2012. According to the astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe, who recovered the apparent meteorite, it carried inside it fossilized and living microorganisms, known as diatoms… and it could therefore be considered proof of panspermia (the passing of alien life across the universe) in action. Once again, though, Wickramsinghe’s claims aren’t widely supported in the scientific community… in fact, they’ve been widely criticised. The main argument against them is that the biological material found on the Polonnaruwa meteorite is too remarkably similar to what’s already common on Earth… leading various other scientists to conclude that, in reality, it’s either a space rock contaminated with water from this planet, or it isn’t a space rock at all.

Of course, plain and simple bits of meteorite, ones which aren’t allegedly teeming with alien microbes, are reasonably common on Earth, given that our planet has endured its fair share of large impacts in the past. Perhaps the most famous are the Canyon Diablo meteorites, which are fragments of a large asteroid that struck Earth around 50,000 years ago. These massive shards of rock have been dated back billions of years, to a time when the entire solar system was only just beginning to form… but, even with all that history behind them, even they haven’t been found to be hosting any type of alien material. The day that an asteroid arrives actually carrying something like the Roswell Rock or the Wedge of Aiud, though… that will be a red-letter day in the search for alien life!

Until then, humankind is sure to keep searching; sifting through the potential false alarms and possible hoaxes until a genuine, bona fide alien artefact reveals itself. And, despite all of the doubt and suspicion which usually circulates an alien artefact claim, it is a field of research which SETI groups and even NASA itself takes increasingly seriously. Space archaeology and artefact SETI are two strands of space exploration which don’t usually make the headlines, but there are a growing number of scientists and astronomers tasked with scanning the skies for signs of alien technology. They’re usually looking for big signs, like whole cities on distant planets, or advanced megastructures like a Dyson Sphere… but the search for alien life inside the solar system goes on, too. We’re confident that there aren’t cities on Mars, for example, but we’re still on the lookout for something smaller.

For many, though, so much of Earth remains unexplored - at least in detail - that we could really do a lot worse than looking right under our noses. Most out-of-place artefacts can be at least partly explained without the suggestion that they’re extraterrestrial, and many ultimately play a key role in shaping what we understand about human history and the history of Earth… but, every so often, something turns up which really turns heads. And, although no single item has ever constituted absolute proof that aliens exist… the debate continues, and the search goes on.