5 Finds that question the age of the human race
Throughout the last few decades, we have made hundreds of discoveries around the world that give us a good idea of how old our species is, but every once in a while something turns up that makes us question everything we know about the age of the human race. Here are 5 finds that question the age of the human race that don’t make sense when compared to what we know about human history.
The London Hammer
In 1936, Max Hahn and his friend were out taking a walk in London, Texas when they saw a strange-looking piece of loose rock that had what appeared to be a piece of wood sticking out of it. The pair thought it was interesting and took it home, placing it in his garage and forgetting about it. Ten years later his son decided to break open the rock and found the wood was part of the shaft of a small iron hammer. The hammer has been tested many times and the metal consists of 96.6% iron, 2.6% chlorine, and 0.74% sulfur. But its age cannot be accurately confirmed and also makes no sense, with the age of the hammer being around 500 million years old, and the rock tested at 400 million years old.
People weren’t even close to existing at that age, and for some reference, the Iron Age didn’t begin in Britain until 800 BCE, making a half-a-billion-year-old iron hammer impossible. The best explanation for its age is that the lime-based rock that has formed around it was a concretion and formed over a few decades. This is when rainfall causes mineral cement to form in the gaps between particles of other substances, similar to how a stalagmite forms in a cave from constantly dripping water, but at a much faster rate. Lime has been used as the main ingredient of mortar for over 2000 years and is very common around the world, so it isn’t unrealistic to suggest someone lost a hammer in the right place and limestone sediment formed and hardened over a few years. The tool is also identical to the style of hammer used by miners during the late 1800s but shows a date so old because the minerals that seeped into the hammer when the rock formed were hundreds of millions of years old.
The Texas rock handprint
The picture below shows a piece of Cretaceous rock that was found in Weatherford, Texas during a dig in 1995, and appears to have the impression of a hand set into it. The strange thing about this one is the rock was apparently discovered in the same layer as the Glen Rose Dinosaur bones, which would make it around 110 million years old. The handprint seems to include the webbing impression between the thumb and finger, but also has small indents made by the fingernails, making it extremely unlikely to have formed naturally.
There are many problems with this age, as nothing that even closely resembled humans or their ancestors was around at this time, and Neanderthals didn’t get the chance to spread across the Americas before they died out. If people did exist alongside the dinosaurs, then this is the only thing found that some could consider evidence, but not everyone is convinced. The rock does appear to be millions of years old, but the owner refuses to send it to outside sources for verification, and the location of its initial discovery was from a private enthusiast and not found officially during a dig.
The Piri Reis map
During the age of exploration, there were many mistakes made by the various map makers of the world. California was initially thought to be cut off from the mainland, tiny islands were drawn as huge continents, and mistakes of ocean distances by thousands of miles probably saw many people lose their lives, but sometimes people who don’t normally make mistakes drew something that’s so wrong it might just not be an accident.
Piri Reis was a Turkish Cartographer and navigator who collected many maps from all around the world during his life, and the masterpiece of his work is a world map made from the many sources he collected over the years. The problem is the map not only shows the continent of Antarctica unfrozen but also has markings that appear to represent forests, farms, and settlements. Antarctica is thought to have frozen during a massive climate shift around 36 million years ago, but before this it would have been covered in plants and animals and would be habitable for humans, it’s just we didn’t exist at the time. For such an experienced sailor and map maker, it seems strange to accidentally include several million square miles of land that can’t be confused for anything other than a giant block of ice.
The Baigong pipes
In the Qinghai province of China is Mount Baigong, also known as White Mountain. There is nothing special about the mountain itself but on its front face are three caves, and surrounding those caves are the Baigong pipes. Two of the caves have collapsed and only the largest remains open, though there is nothing in the caves themselves that’s out of the ordinary. There are hundreds of pipes surrounding the areas outside the caves, and they seem to flow into the rock to locations that no longer exist or never did.
The pipes have been tested and the results showed 92% to be made from a mixture of rust, silicon dioxide, and calcium oxide, but 8% couldn’t be verified and consisted of unknown material. An article released in Xinmin Weekly in 2003 claimed a local team found the pipes were all filled with organic matter, suggesting they were tree roots that had petrified or were the remains of fossilized trees. If they were pipes that fed or re-directed something, there doesn’t seem to be any traces of the original machines or other systems they connected to.
The Yonaguni monument
Laying about 100 kilometers east of Taiwan in Japanese waters is the Yonaguni monument. This giant stone formation was discovered in 1986 by divers looking to observe hammerhead sharks when they accidentally swam past it, immediately noticing it to be out of place. Over the years many researchers have dived to the site to collect samples and gather information, and there now seem to be two main explanations for why and how it’s there. The first is that it is a natural formation that was carved out of the soft sand and mudstone that was deposited there around 20 million years ago. This softer type of rock is much easier for the water currents to sculpt but still doesn’t answer the question as to why it’s taken on such a strange shape with so many angles.
The second explanation is a little more strange and suggests it was man-made, but this would make it at least 10,000 years old for it to have been above sea level at the time of construction. All of the blocks seem to be one connected piece instead of stacked stone suggesting a natural formation, but none of the blocks have cracked at the angle lines which would have happened if they were formed naturally by the sea, suggesting they were carved. There are strong arguments for both theories, with most of them leaning towards the formation being natural, but the huge amount of perfect angles all in the same place is enough to convince many that humans are responsible for this one.
