Speaker 1: Hey guys, Steve, here, you are listening to one of
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Speaker 1: great Bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't understand this. I'm not
Speaker 1: going new. You never know stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer too. Hey, welcome, This is Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways the podcast. I'm Devin, I'm Steve, I'm Joe, and
Speaker 1: uh we're going to talk about a mystery. I know
Speaker 1: it's I love a mystery. The mystery I want to
Speaker 1: talk about is a mystery artifact mysterious artifact. Mystery. It's
Speaker 1: a mystery artifactor, it's also mysterious, also mysterious. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's just get started in nineteen thirty eight, because I
Speaker 1: can't say it the Bagdad Museum, the German director of
Speaker 1: the National Museum of Iraq, either unearthed this artifact during
Speaker 1: an excavation near Baghdad or found it in the basement
Speaker 1: of the Bagdad Museum. That's kind of what I how
Speaker 1: I understand it is he just found it laying around
Speaker 1: the museum care He claims that he found it on
Speaker 1: an excavation, but it seems like he may have just
Speaker 1: found it in the basement. I think he found it
Speaker 1: in the basement. I'll tell you. I'll tell you why
Speaker 1: I think so little later on. Right, So, this mysterious
Speaker 1: artifact is a terra cotta pot that's about five inches
Speaker 1: tall and the mouth of it is one and a
Speaker 1: half inches. It contains a copper cylinder made of like
Speaker 1: a rolled up copper sheet, and it houses a single
Speaker 1: iron rod isolated from the copper by an asphalt plug
Speaker 1: or a stopper. They call it a stopper two and
Speaker 1: the rod and cylinder fits snugly into the opening of
Speaker 1: the jar and then and the jar is, as Joe
Speaker 1: said when we were talking about this earlier, kind of
Speaker 1: shaped like a hand grenade. It bulges out at the edges.
Speaker 1: It's not straight up and down or it's not cylindrical.
Speaker 1: It's not a cylinder. It had bulges, and it's not
Speaker 1: water tight. So if the jar were filled with liquid,
Speaker 1: everything would be surrounded, including the rod. Oh, everything goes
Speaker 1: into the rod and submerged. Huh. Initially they dated these
Speaker 1: objects to objects to be about two thousand years old,
Speaker 1: which would put it in like two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: BCE to two hundred and fifty CE. Okay, common era
Speaker 1: and before common era. So okay, so anybody's wondering, and
Speaker 1: they're called the bag Dad batteries, well because they're pretty
Speaker 1: sure they're the first instance of batteries. Weird. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's what they ran their iPods off of.
Speaker 1: I assume, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. No, So they did
Speaker 1: actually conduct an electrical current, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: The copper and iron, they form what's called an electrochemical couple,
Speaker 1: so that if any kind of electrolyte containing liquid were
Speaker 1: exposed to them, they would make an electric charge, a
Speaker 1: voltage of some kind. I think they did some experiments
Speaker 1: so like reconstructing those they got one point one volts
Speaker 1: out of them. I think, yeah, they actually they reproduced these.
Speaker 1: They did a couple of reproductions of these, because obviously
Speaker 1: you don't test it in like the two thousand year
Speaker 1: old pots. Yeah, that seems like a yeah. And they
Speaker 1: filled it with grape juice, which is apparently has a
Speaker 1: lot of electrolytes in it. Well, yeah, so why not
Speaker 1: because they thought grape juice. Also, they had grape juice
Speaker 1: back then, so it'd be a pretty good representation of
Speaker 1: something they might have used. And it produced two vaults
Speaker 1: with the grape juice, which is, you know, not a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's something, it's some kind of it's a charge
Speaker 1: of some kind. So, you know, one of the big
Speaker 1: questions that people have about this is how could ancient
Speaker 1: Persian science have kind of grasped the ideas of electricity?
Speaker 1: But I think really the best answer to that is
Speaker 1: you don't really have to know how something works to
Speaker 1: know that it works. Oh well, that's how a lot
Speaker 1: of things in history have discovered. Is you go, oh,
Speaker 1: look at that. I have no idea but it totally
Speaker 1: works every time, it works reliably, So I think that
Speaker 1: we can just kind of ignore that question in my
Speaker 1: mind at least. Well, that sort of begs the question.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could have been, it could have produced
Speaker 1: electric current, but is what do you do with it?
Speaker 1: That is exactly yes, yeah, well do you deal with it?
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of theories on this. One
Speaker 1: suggestion was painkilling Greeks from you know again but way
Speaker 1: before this time, we talk about the pain killing attributes
Speaker 1: of electrical fish, like electrical eels, et cetera. If they
Speaker 1: were in pain, they would use those and it would
Speaker 1: help dull the pain apparently. And that's kind of like
Speaker 1: when you when you've got you know, if you've ever
Speaker 1: gone to a chiropractor and you have back problems, they'll
Speaker 1: put a little electrodes on your back and run a
Speaker 1: little current through you to help ease things off. I
Speaker 1: think it relaxes your muscles. Yeah, if you've got something
Speaker 1: that's not in tense and that that extra current seems
Speaker 1: to make it let go and relax and then yeahhard
Speaker 1: so much. Yeah. Actually, they actually make like portable versions
Speaker 1: of those two like this, Like old family friend of
Speaker 1: my parents years ago. He had serious back issues, I
Speaker 1: mean really bad, and so he actually had this this
Speaker 1: little pack that he carried around with him and it
Speaker 1: was wired into it, you know, and it was back
Speaker 1: and it was like he could just you know, I
Speaker 1: just feeling a little pain, you could just turn it
Speaker 1: up a little bit, you know. And I was like,
Speaker 1: and I asked him about it. I said, is it like,
Speaker 1: would you say, kind of addictive? I mean, when you
Speaker 1: crank that thing, you know, does it really feel awesome?
Speaker 1: And he says, yeah, it kind of does. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: by any way, we're getting way up. But I mean
Speaker 1: it shows that, you know, electricity does I have that
Speaker 1: effect in small doses obviously not large doses. But it
Speaker 1: could also have been used for interrogation, because imagine the
Speaker 1: intimidation effect if you know, the interrogator said, I will
Speaker 1: I'll use this back to an hour on one point
Speaker 1: one vaults. So you're going at I mean that would
Speaker 1: be intimidating. Well, I would be intimidating. You know. The
Speaker 1: thing is is that, like it turns out two vaults
Speaker 1: is like not a lot. I mean, so everybody's done
Speaker 1: this experiment right with like a nine vault battery and
Speaker 1: you like put it on your tongue and it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel great, But it also isn't that painful, It turns
Speaker 1: out is not. It's not that much. It's also a
Speaker 1: function of current, though it's not just I mean, nine
Speaker 1: holes can hurt you at a high current, but you know, sure,
Speaker 1: sure low current. Now you know current like these are producing,
Speaker 1: it's not really gonna do anything. And they also talk
Speaker 1: about there's a lot of records of ancient Persians using
Speaker 1: things like cannabis and opium and wine for pain killers,
Speaker 1: which are all like way more effective, more powerful than
Speaker 1: like a two vault little like battery situation. So do
Speaker 1: you think that they used to really use them for
Speaker 1: pain or do you think they would just get high?
Speaker 1: There are other suggestions that they used this to power something, right,
Speaker 1: and I think this is one of the more interesting
Speaker 1: theories because two volts isn't a lot, but two volts
Speaker 1: is a lot when you've got like twenty of them.
Speaker 1: But they've only found the one correct, yes, so we
Speaker 1: don't know if there's been more, if there was a
Speaker 1: bunch of them put together, okay, okay, so we don't
Speaker 1: know that, and the other the other well, then the
Speaker 1: other problem that they have is that they've never just
Speaker 1: covered any wires. This is a big problem that scientists have.
Speaker 1: They say, well, we didn't discover any wires with it.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, first of all, where did you discover
Speaker 1: this one standalone battery, right, because maybe there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of wires, maybe two. It's been two thousand years.
Speaker 1: Copper corrodes pretty quickly. I just feel like a thin
Speaker 1: copper wire isn't gonna make it two thousand years in
Speaker 1: the ground. Maybe not. But well, and this gets back
Speaker 1: to what I was referring to you a little bit
Speaker 1: earlier about WILLIELM. Kunig and possibly being the person who
Speaker 1: dug this up. And I don't think it was because
Speaker 1: apparently the records, generally speaking archaeologists, when they dig something up,
Speaker 1: they keep very meticulous notes about exactly where everything was
Speaker 1: found in relationship to everything else. Apparently whoever dug this
Speaker 1: battery up or whatever this thing is didn't really do that,
Speaker 1: so it's more of an amateur thing. Somebody, just some
Speaker 1: treasure hunter found it, maybe wound up doning it to
Speaker 1: the museum. And then Phil Helm, who was curator of
Speaker 1: the museum, just stumbled across it in the basement, in
Speaker 1: the box somewhere. But yeah, since whoever dug it up
Speaker 1: didn't really document the site as carefully as he should have,
Speaker 1: then who knows, maybe there were a few wires were Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe there were a few other batteries laying around.
Speaker 1: Who knows. Ye might not have even recognized him for
Speaker 1: what they do. Yeah, maybe he thought they were like
Speaker 1: trails of centipedes or something. Well maybe, yeah, we know,
Speaker 1: but you know, that kind of makes the question of
Speaker 1: like what, you know, they're not charging their iPods right now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so what were they maybe trying to charge?
Speaker 1: And huh. Yeah, somebody tried to claim that they actually
Speaker 1: used these batteries to power lights. Yeah, actually, this is
Speaker 1: exactly what I was going to say. But again, no
Speaker 1: evidence has been found of anything resembling a light bulb. Well,
Speaker 1: they have the one evidence, one piece of like kind
Speaker 1: of shaky evidence they have is this relief, a hieroglyphic
Speaker 1: relief inside of a pyramid. They call it the Deandra bulb,
Speaker 1: and it looks it actually looks like a bulb, like
Speaker 1: a light bulb, like a light bulb, kind of about that, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's the big, the big long cylinder that's in the
Speaker 1: same image that will put up. But yeah, I can
Speaker 1: see that that could be interpreted as a light bulb
Speaker 1: based on our understanding of them, but we don't have
Speaker 1: an understanding of what that could have represented culturally or
Speaker 1: contextually at the time. Well, I can tell you what
Speaker 1: scientists like, actual scientists, Okay, yes, please, no, they think.
Speaker 1: So the squiggly line right here in the middle of it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is the nile slash a snake. And then this is
Speaker 1: a little lotus flower, So it's talking about fertility and
Speaker 1: like continue. So it's a really different representation than people
Speaker 1: have ascribed to it. It does look like a light bulb,
Speaker 1: let's be fair. It does, but no, no, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a one instance, and it can it
Speaker 1: can be explained in other ways. It could be a
Speaker 1: giant hot dog for all we know. It could be right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing they talk about with those though,
Speaker 1: is that, according to some people, you can't actually take
Speaker 1: a torch, a lit torch into the deepest parts of
Speaker 1: a pyramid because there's not enough oxygen for the fire
Speaker 1: to keep going. So the big problem is how did
Speaker 1: they light the inside of that? If a torch won't
Speaker 1: keep burning. True, that's good point. And they've said they've
Speaker 1: done some experiments where people tried to use like mirrors
Speaker 1: to light the way, but the light diffuses too quickly
Speaker 1: for them to actually get it into any kind of
Speaker 1: depth of significance. So you know, that's kind of the
Speaker 1: idea behind needing a light bulb. And I guess, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I understand that, But I just don't think this is
Speaker 1: the only place we've found this specific illustration or relief
Speaker 1: of it. You would think that if somebody did this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, that idea would have been documented more
Speaker 1: than one drawing. I agree, yeah, And I think you
Speaker 1: would have found more, Especially inside of a pyramid, right,
Speaker 1: if you're excavating a pyramid, there would be these things
Speaker 1: in the innermost chambers, you would assume, right, you would think,
Speaker 1: and there'd be wires and stuff like that. You would
Speaker 1: you would leave it there. Plus, I mean there there
Speaker 1: are always to ventilate your pyramid, even back in those days.
Speaker 1: I mean they were probably were ventilator shafts that probably
Speaker 1: over the years got filled in and plugged. Probably you
Speaker 1: know you can you can you can build a ventilator shaft,
Speaker 1: build a fire underneath it, and it'll center draft up
Speaker 1: that it will suck out. It'll basically create a nice
Speaker 1: draft and bring a nice fresh air for you, so
Speaker 1: your torchies will stay lit. Yeah, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible. They they probably had something like that going on,
Speaker 1: I would guess yea. And probably when they're all done
Speaker 1: and they had it all filled in and you know,
Speaker 1: perils all put to rest and everything like that, they
Speaker 1: might have just gone ahead and plugged up the vent
Speaker 1: hole just for security. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there are definitely ways to explain away.
Speaker 1: Or they just you know, ancient aliens and flashlights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had flashlights, ancient LEDs. Yeah. So another theory is
Speaker 1: that they use these batteries for electroplating. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: read about this, and yeah, this was a kind of
Speaker 1: a weird one. To figure out. I had to do
Speaker 1: a bunch of research on exactly how electroplating works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really that's kind of a tough one. How would
Speaker 1: you find out? Well, the way I understand electroplating is
Speaker 1: that if you've got let's say gold and silver in
Speaker 1: a substrate, let's just use vinegar, because that's an easy
Speaker 1: one for us. All it works relatively well. If I
Speaker 1: understand how it's working is that it's and correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. If you know, if either of you
Speaker 1: know better, is that it's kind of at the molecular level.
Speaker 1: It breaks some of the gold on the exterior down
Speaker 1: that's in the solution, and it's attracted to the piece
Speaker 1: of silver and then it bonds to that and that
Speaker 1: process continues so that you're shuttling at a very very
Speaker 1: thin level, little bits at a time. So it's not
Speaker 1: a fast profit, especially in something as small as that is,
Speaker 1: or if you were using grape juice or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: because it's the pH isn't that high, and it's it's
Speaker 1: just what it is. It doesn't do a good job.
Speaker 1: But electroplating is kind of a it's just such a
Speaker 1: scientific process we figured out with the eighteen hundreds. I
Speaker 1: think we've finally got a good beat on how to
Speaker 1: electroplate things. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly one that we
Speaker 1: developed that kind of technology. I know it was in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. I mean that certainly to me, is
Speaker 1: a more believable theory than powering electrical devices like leg bulbs,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, so I you know, I also
Speaker 1: did a lot of research on electroplating, because it is
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a weird thing to get your
Speaker 1: head around. And what I came up with in my
Speaker 1: research was that while yes, something like this could be
Speaker 1: potentially used for electroplating, there's no actual evidence of anything
Speaker 1: from this time being electroplated. Everything from this time has
Speaker 1: very visible signs of more conventional ways of you know,
Speaker 1: plating things, hammering them together. I think that's what they
Speaker 1: usually do it. They would they'd hammered it into a
Speaker 1: thin sheet and then hammer the two together in bondom
Speaker 1: gilt plating. They call it guilt plating or doing mercury guilding,
Speaker 1: which is basically just like putting, like putting them both
Speaker 1: in mercury and melting them together without any kind of
Speaker 1: electric current or anything like that. Right, sounds a lot
Speaker 1: more basic than simple and easy. Yeah, they totally are.
Speaker 1: And you know that's those are the only ways we've
Speaker 1: ever found anything from this time period. But I did.
Speaker 1: I did find it funny. One of the articles, and
Speaker 1: that I don't remember exactly where I found it, was
Speaker 1: saying that if this thing was used to electroplate gold
Speaker 1: onto other objects. So it's a cheaper way of making
Speaker 1: all of your gold effigies and everything like that, or
Speaker 1: your gold trinkets that the pharaoh whoever has that there
Speaker 1: could be all of this supposed pure gold in museums.
Speaker 1: It's actually electroplated stuff and it's not actually gold. It's silver,
Speaker 1: copper or whatever that then has the gold on top
Speaker 1: of Yeah, that would be micron sheet. Yeah, as all
Speaker 1: of those things are. I don't buy it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I would have worn off by now, but all at
Speaker 1: least in places. But also it'd be quite obvious if
Speaker 1: something was like say silver, played it with gold, because
Speaker 1: it wouldn't weigh nearly enough. Yeah. Yeah, because gold's a
Speaker 1: lot denser. Yeah. Yeah, I thought he stressed about that.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't really accept it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't buy that one. I'm going to skip the next
Speaker 1: theory because it's my favorite one and go on to
Speaker 1: like the more mundane science y boring mcboor bull. So
Speaker 1: there's two boring mcbors. One is that these jars were
Speaker 1: containers to hold papyrus scrolls. Okay, actually I think that
Speaker 1: that's the most believable. One it is. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: pretty believable. Yeah, I'm In March of twenty twelve, this
Speaker 1: Iraq archaeologist named Professor Elizabeth Stone, she's a professor at
Speaker 1: the stony Brook University, went on the first archael logical
Speaker 1: expedition in Iraq for twenty years. And she did. She
Speaker 1: was doing an interview on NPR during which they were
Speaker 1: taking phone callers and somebody called in and was like, well,
Speaker 1: what about the bag dad batteries? Tell us about those,
Speaker 1: and her response was to say that she didn't know
Speaker 1: anybody who believed a single archaeologist who believed that they
Speaker 1: were actually batteries. Okay, So I think that we've we've
Speaker 1: missed a bit of information that that everybody's going to
Speaker 1: want to know, which is we were saying that they
Speaker 1: put grape juice or whatever it is. Now when they
Speaker 1: found them, they said they had traces of some kind
Speaker 1: of acidic code. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, grape juice in them. Right.
Speaker 1: So the theory is that it was the papyrus that
Speaker 1: disintegrated and coated the walls, okay, and that it could
Speaker 1: have been the same kind of residue, you know, it
Speaker 1: was the thirties and forties. Okay, so the uh so,
Speaker 1: obviously whoever whoever excavated this jar was a little careless
Speaker 1: because they they just popped it, you know, and all
Speaker 1: this papyrus stuff sort of flaked flaked away now and
Speaker 1: they went, oh look it's yeah, they just turned the
Speaker 1: jar outside down and shook it out and put it
Speaker 1: back together. Yeah, you know, you expect that stuff to
Speaker 1: be in there. You know, somebody was a little sloppy.
Speaker 1: So that's you know, that's the theory. There's another theory
Speaker 1: that it's a hoax that is just totally flat out
Speaker 1: a hoax. Well yeah, so like there's to start with,
Speaker 1: there's the red flag of the inconsistent stories of how
Speaker 1: you found it, right, and then there's the problem of
Speaker 1: age where they say that it was from two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty BCE and after a common era, but apparently
Speaker 1: if you look at the kind of artistic qualities of it,
Speaker 1: it's more in line with like what happened in two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty a CE to like six hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty CE, which was like style of jar that they
Speaker 1: made at that time. So it's like a nine hundred
Speaker 1: year difference. Yeah, that's a bit of an issue. So
Speaker 1: those are two really big issues. How did they how
Speaker 1: did they data the data actually using scientific instrumentation or
Speaker 1: just by looking at the style of the jar and saying, wow,
Speaker 1: the people that built this kind of jar with this
Speaker 1: particular time, Yeah, I think you know, initially he just said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's probably from this time. So I remember reading about this,
Speaker 1: and the way that I understand it is as Devin said,
Speaker 1: is that the two hundred and fifty CE to eight
Speaker 1: hundred or whatever side that was all based on the
Speaker 1: style of the construction of it in the shape and
Speaker 1: however they quote unquote would have decorated on the outside
Speaker 1: because it's it's got grooved lines on the outside. I'm
Speaker 1: almost as if somebody had taken a wire brush. It's
Speaker 1: not smooth. Now. Granted, when they found it it was outside.
Speaker 1: It was really kind of eroded, so nobody knows exactly
Speaker 1: what it was adorned with. But if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: Koonig William is his name, right, Okay, Williem If I
Speaker 1: remember right, he was dating it to the time frame
Speaker 1: he had, and I'm pretty sure that he did some
Speaker 1: kind of analysis that was what was available at the time.
Speaker 1: You know, they didn't have good radio dating like we
Speaker 1: have now. Radio dating is the wrong word, what is it?
Speaker 1: But I think it was based on something to do
Speaker 1: with the metal is how he was dating it, which
Speaker 1: could be two different things if you think about it. Logically,
Speaker 1: somebody could have taken a chunk of metal that had
Speaker 1: been worked years and years prior and been sitting around
Speaker 1: and just repurposed it into this jar, So they could
Speaker 1: be from separate time frames, or the dating just could
Speaker 1: just be completely off. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's from
Speaker 1: I don't think that any it's it's never been released
Speaker 1: to be carbon dated. Yeah, so that's the problem. It's problem.
Speaker 1: Is this thing still around by the way, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: supposedly in them is anybody? Oh? Is it in the museum? Apparently?
Speaker 1: I mean it's you know, it's not enough. Who knows.
Speaker 1: So let's go to my absolute favorite theory about this,
Speaker 1: because I think that it's probably was a battery of
Speaker 1: some kind. It had a little bit of electric charge
Speaker 1: to it, very enough to like kind of you would
Speaker 1: feel it. There's this guy and he's a metallurgy expert
Speaker 1: of ancient Near East for the British Museum. His name
Speaker 1: is doctor kratick, and he has this theory, which is
Speaker 1: that like a cluster of these batteries connected behind some
Speaker 1: kind of metal statue or idol could have been connected
Speaker 1: to the idol as a sort of temple trick. So
Speaker 1: you go, so you go, like and you're it's like
Speaker 1: a proof of religion sort of situation, a proof well,
Speaker 1: I'm not a proof of faith, a proof of religion. Right.
Speaker 1: So an unbeliever comes to a synagogue or a church
Speaker 1: or whatever and says, okay, prove to me that your
Speaker 1: God exists. And the preacher says, okay, if you answer
Speaker 1: this question correctly, when you touch the statue, it will
Speaker 1: shock you, and if you answer wrongly, it will not
Speaker 1: shock you. And they are like standing right next to it. Right,
Speaker 1: things like this are not common at this time, right,
Speaker 1: so they're not going to be suspicious of somebody standing
Speaker 1: next to this statue. So they say okay, and they
Speaker 1: answer the question correctly, and everything remains connected, and they
Speaker 1: touch the statue and it shocks them, or they answer incorrectly,
Speaker 1: and the priest just goes boop and like moves the
Speaker 1: one little connector right, what's the switch essentially right, And
Speaker 1: they touch it and it doesn't shock them. Humm, I
Speaker 1: like it. I like it. I like it a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe there would maybe be a mysterious kind
Speaker 1: of blue flash of like static electricity of some sort.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a great point because at that time
Speaker 1: those static electricity exists and everybody will have seen it
Speaker 1: from time to time. You don't know what causes it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody says, oh, it's static electricity. You have no idea
Speaker 1: what it is. And there's probably some local folklore name
Speaker 1: to it. So it's God. God is the you know,
Speaker 1: this particular God has reached out and created this reaction.
Speaker 1: That that's a good one. Yeah. So you know, it
Speaker 1: could have been that it could have just been like
Speaker 1: a magician could have been using it. A lot of
Speaker 1: people made their living kind of traveling around performing miracles
Speaker 1: and some magic and stuff like that, kind of a
Speaker 1: carpet baggers. Yeah. So you know, if you could just say, oh,
Speaker 1: if you touch this magical idol of God, you will
Speaker 1: get shocked, and nobody would have known what that was
Speaker 1: all about. You know, it could actually have been for
Speaker 1: just a sort of a gag thing too, like like
Speaker 1: a joy buzzer, you know those old things you wear
Speaker 1: in your hands, you know, shock people. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: reason somebody couldn't have you know, some ancient king, maybe
Speaker 1: I couldn't have said you like it had his courtiers behind,
Speaker 1: I know, without like twenty of these jars all wired
Speaker 1: and serious that they're carrying. And he's got the wires
Speaker 1: running down his sleeve through his hand and he goes
Speaker 1: to shake your hand and you get zapped, and he
Speaker 1: has a good checkle at your expense. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a time when a lot of
Speaker 1: miracles and mysterious things are being recorded. A lot of
Speaker 1: mythos happen, a lot of mythos happened that in this time,
Speaker 1: and people were just fanatic for proving that they were
Speaker 1: telling the truth. And I think that people would go
Speaker 1: to kind of any lengths to prove that they were
Speaker 1: telling the truth. And you know, having this little kind
Speaker 1: of kind of carpet trick. It's a tiny little battery,
Speaker 1: super easy to be concealed, but you don't need that
Speaker 1: many of them. Two volts is enough. You touch something
Speaker 1: that's metal and you're not expecting any kind of electrical current.
Speaker 1: You feel a slight tingling of your hand and other
Speaker 1: people are doing it, are feeling the same thing. That's enough,
Speaker 1: you know, for a lot of people in a time
Speaker 1: like this, that's enough. Well, and it's not something you're
Speaker 1: used to. Well, you don't expect it. You don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. And here's the one thing that
Speaker 1: I find so funny about there's Okay, I don't ascribe
Speaker 1: to it being a battery per se, and I but
Speaker 1: I don't really know what this thing is for. This
Speaker 1: is one of those you know, A can mean this
Speaker 1: gonna be that it's just so long, there's so little
Speaker 1: data on it. But what I find so funny is
Speaker 1: that everybody just flocks to if it was a battery,
Speaker 1: where are the wires. There's no holes coming out of
Speaker 1: the top of it for the wires and the you know,
Speaker 1: they sealed it with bitchumen, which is basically asphalt. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's naturally occurring asphalt, so it seals it. So it's
Speaker 1: got to have the wires to make the connection. Well
Speaker 1: there's there's no there's no holes for the connection. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well it's found outside. And what does asphalt do when
Speaker 1: it sits in the sun, It gets hot and it
Speaker 1: melts and it did starts. So if some yo yo
Speaker 1: came along and found this and yank the wires out
Speaker 1: to use them in something else and then toss it
Speaker 1: on the ground, it sits in the sun for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, the holes where the wires were at
Speaker 1: are going to seal themselves up just from expansion and contraction.
Speaker 1: The thing that I actually saw was a theory that
Speaker 1: they had just like wrapped a little bit of copper
Speaker 1: around in between where the copper and the asphalt were,
Speaker 1: so that it would connect to the inside where the
Speaker 1: sat or where the electricity would be, and then you
Speaker 1: just put like two little wires on the outside, and
Speaker 1: then the copper would have you know, disintegrated or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: over time. But I think, you know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to explain the well, the wires. That's
Speaker 1: the one thing that I laugh at, as you know,
Speaker 1: I said, well, somebody took the wire. What nobody seems
Speaker 1: to consider. And I'm not saying I'm the expert on
Speaker 1: this and that I've got the perfect theory, but it
Speaker 1: just seems odd to me that nobody says, well, I
Speaker 1: wonder if anybody messed with this thing and gutted it
Speaker 1: for the stuff that they wanted, because, as we've talked
Speaker 1: about on other shows, that's common. Yeah, you take materials
Speaker 1: that are existing and you use them on something else,
Speaker 1: which means that it could have had something on the outside,
Speaker 1: a wire on the inside, who knows what it is,
Speaker 1: and some guy could have, oh, you know, I could
Speaker 1: totally use this yank, toss it back in the sand
Speaker 1: and walk away. Yeah. Really, the other thing I think
Speaker 1: is that's possible is that somebody could have just been, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a scientist inventor type, just experimenting around and
Speaker 1: finds this thing that generates a little bit of electricity
Speaker 1: and then just thought it over and thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: what kind of possibly use this for. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a neat parlor trick, I guess, but really, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not useful. So he just like sort of chunked
Speaker 1: on the junk pile in the backyard, and one about
Speaker 1: it is one about went on to the invent the
Speaker 1: shovel or something else instead, you know. I mean, so
Speaker 1: it's like it's entirely possible that somebody was experimenting around
Speaker 1: trying to create electricity, but they just had no application
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, and so it just went on the junkie.
Speaker 1: It's like, Wow, cool idea, but you know, kind of
Speaker 1: very possible. Yeah, I think I think it's the religious
Speaker 1: or parlor trick situation. I think that's a cool idea.
Speaker 1: I just without having more of them, I can't follow that.
Speaker 1: That's fair. Yeah, what's your what do you think? Really?
Speaker 1: The thing is that this one has got so much
Speaker 1: conflicting you don't know. I just I'm hesitant to lean
Speaker 1: towards one because there's just too many gaps. Just pulling
Speaker 1: the skeptic card, I am man. What do you think Aliens?
Speaker 1: Of course, Santa Claus. I think I'm still leaning kind
Speaker 1: of towards the papyrus. The scroll. Yeah, the pirate scroll.
Speaker 1: I think that's a compelling explanation for it. I think
Speaker 1: so too. If you have theories, if you want to
Speaker 1: let us know hand grenade, No, it's not a hand grenade,
Speaker 1: send us an email. Email address is Thinking Sideways Podcast
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. Check out our website. We're gonna
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Speaker 1: talk to you next week. Bye, guys, so long