archeological question:

[lloth]

Wasn't sure to put this under the skepticism or the science part, but here goes.

Recently on another forum I was involved in a discussion about the "160,000 year old man", and someone gave me some links to look at- I guess to show how our scientists are either wrong or haven't told us the whole truth. My interest in man's past is more in the biology aspect, and I really know little about archeology and ancient artifacts. Here are the links:
http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar.htm
http://www.nasca.org.uk/Strange_relics_/strange_relics_.html
http://www.nasca.org.uk/Strange_relics_/strange_relics_.html
I would appreciate any input, as I really have no facts to bolster my feeling that these sites are merely misleading and likely to contain much info that is either misconstrued or possibly outright lies. Those are just my thoughts based on the rest of the two sites' content.

Thanks ahead of time, even if you can just point me to a site that deals with these types of claims that would help too.

[reprise]

I'd recommend cut and pasting your post to the Cult Archaeology (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15107) thread.

[Frostbite]

A couple years ago I read a book called Forbidden Archeology by Michael Cremo and some other dude. 900 pages worth of rambling about how humans were millions of years old, based on some weird evidence like footsteps in strata. I thought it was pretty intriguing until I realized it had been edited and published Bhaktivedanta institute (http://www.afn.org/~bvi/). I became somewhat doubtful of its contents.

[MRC_Hans]

Make searches on these subjects and you will find that they have all been solidly debunked or demystified. The "Coso Artifact", for example, has been politively identified as a spark plug from around 1920.

Others are merely mysteries in the mind of the beholder. For example the Bagdad Batteries; they are moslt likely actually batteries, and it is of course an amazing realization that such things were invented that early, but where is the mystery? The babylonians were keen scientists and excellent astronomers. They had a use for those batteries (metal plating), and it seems they made a discovery, which was subsequently guarded by an inner circle and forgotten when they fell from power.

Or the Egyptian model planes; so it seems that they made a toy bird that could actually fly (glide)? Well, great, but what is mystic about it?

And the mystic gold figure that looks like a delta-winged plane? Well, it looks like a fish too, or something else. Certainly the "technical" explanetion on that site comes from somebody that knows very little about aircraft.

Hans