the ten most puzzling ancient artifacts

Over time a range of ancient artifacts have been found that cannot be definitively explained. In some cases the origin or use is unknown. In other cases what is found has a recognisable use, uses a known technology, or tells a familiar story, but is dated at an age in which these things are not supposed to have existed. Here are a couple of examples of this type of puzzling artifact, taken from this webpage (which describes all of the ten most puzzling ancient artifacts) :

The Dropa Stones

In 1938, an archeological expedition led by Dr. Chi Pu Tei into the Baian-Kara-Ula mountains of China made an astonishing discovery in some caves that had apparently been occupied by some ancient culture. Buried in the dust of ages on the cave floor were hundreds of stone disks. Measuring about nine inches in diameter, each had a circle cut into the center and was etched with a spiral groove, making it look for all the world like some ancient phonograph record some 10,000 to 12,000 years old. The spiral groove, it turns out, is actually composed of tiny hieroglyphics that tell the incredible story of spaceships from some distant world that crash-landed in the mountains. The ships were piloted by people who called themselves the Dropa, and the remains of whose descendents, possibly, were found in the cave.

Ancient Model Aircraft

There are artifacts belonging to ancient Egyptian and Central American cultures that look amazingly like modern-day aircraft. The Egyptian artifact, found in a tomb at Saqquara, Egypt in 1898, is a six-inch wooden object that strongly resembles a model airplane, with fuselage, wings and tail. Experts believe the object is so aerodynamic that it is actually able to glide. The small object discovered in Central America (shown at right), and estimated to be 1,000 years old, is made of gold and could easily be mistaken for a model of a delta-wing aircraft - or even the Space Shuttle. It even features what looks like a pilot's seat.

The questions artifacts like this prompt are so interesting, I'm kind of amazed that I hadn't heard of any of these artifacts before. I mean, people will ramble on about Area 51 for hours, when the Dropa Stones, if authentic (and I haven't read anything suggesting they aren't) are a much more interesting evidence of aliens possibly having visited Earth. Even more intriguing since 1995, when a tribe of people calling themselves Dropa, who fit genetically into no previously identified Earth race, was found in a remote area located in the mountains between China and Tibet. They are a pigmy race (mostly around 2.5 - 3ft tall), which is consistent with the skeletons found in the same caves as the stones (they were a little taller, but inbreeding over time might have made the feature more prevalent).

The detail described in the account of the ancient model aircraft makes me wonder whether ancient civilisations did have technologies we think of as only being developed in relatively modern times. It also makes me wonder how they might have utilised those technologies in ways that are different to the way more recent civilisations did, and what might have happened that the technologies were so completely lost. I suppose one factor is the relative isolation in which they lived, where technologies may not have spread because one civilisation was not necessarily aware of another.

I do rather like the theory that our Earth, rather than being made from nothing as some Creationists believe, was made from existing matter. If that matter was used previously for other creations, then that could explain things like fossils and dinosaur bones, coal and other mineral deposits, even if the Earth was not as old as we thought. However, I don't think this theory is so plausible for most of the kind of artifacts described, though it could explain the spark plug type object in the ancient rock. But regardless, it would still point to their being other peoples and civilisations out there in space. And, you know, God and stuff. :)

Alternatively it might all just mean that our carbon-dating processes are useless.