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Well, silly as all of this seems, on some level, there is that old quote, which, by the way, I saw the newsreel of, with the original soundtrack, from Dr. Robert Oppenheimer during his first press conference after the USA's use of a nuclear weapon was made public, wherein, when asked if the test explosion at Trinity Site was the first man-made nuclear explosion, he responded, somewhat strangely, "Yes, it was . . . in modern times." Amazingly, none of the members of the press followed up on his odd qualification of his answer.

Just to pour more speculative fuel on the fire, at the time that the Trinity nuke was lighting up the New Mexico desert, Dr. Oppenheimer recited a few lines from the Mahabharata, "I am Shiva, the destroyer of worlds . . ." Why mention it? Because the Mahabharata, which had a place on Oppy's bookshelf, is the epic Indian tale of a high tech war between two alien cultures that allegedly took place in prehistoric India, the culmination of which was the discharge of nuclear missiles from flying vehicles.

Having said all of that, it is an easy thing to agree that it makes no sense that there could be a nuclear war in the prehistoric period without there being substantial evidence of high tech society being extant. Even in the aforesaid Canticle for Leibowitz, there were references to the existence of such irradiated artifacts here and there.

Intriguingly, there are a few artifacts, although so few as to underline the skeptics' point. For instance, new archaeological digs in India of Happen ruins are detecting unusually high levels of radioactivity. The data need a lot of examination, but the obvious (although extremely unlikely) possibility is that it is evidence of the Mahabharatan war.

There is also a complex of pipes and conduits in some rock mounds on the shore of a lake high in the mountains of China, a place long associated in local folk tales with the descent of people from the sky. The weird part about the pipes is that this is a location that never saw any known development of civilization or development of any kind, beyond primitive, low population mountain dweller settlements. Why would anyone install a complex array of modern-appearing pipes into the rocks of this area? The initial evidence indicated that these pipes were placed there in the prehistoric period. The Chinese government was sufficiently impressed by the initial evidence that it sent an expedition of scientists to the site. Several news reports were issued on the launching of this expedition three years ago. Unfortunately, there have been no reports since then on the expedition's outcome.

Next, there is the use of large sheets of mica between layers of stone in the ancient structures of Shank, a rather odd ancient architectural practice, as mica has no structural strength, and placing it behind a layer of stone meant it was not decorative. However, mica is very useful for shielding against radio waves and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) radiation. The mica used at this particular site came from far away in the Amazon Basin of Brazil and was transported in sheets as large as 23.5 meters square, no mean feat for a primitive society. Why did they go to all of that bother?

One more tidbit about ancient "modernism": there are a huge number of records in the Smithsonian and in the archives of the geology section at Harvard concerning anomalous finds in solid lumps of coal mined in the eastern half of the US, from Illinois to the East Coast. Such items as decorated metal pots and finely-wrought gold chains were found imbedded in the 360 million year old carbon rock. Now, it makes little sense that such things would be so, since the Carboniferous predated the rise of humans (according to conventional wisdom) by approximately 300 million years give or take a fews tens of millions. Were every one of these finds hoaxes? No explanation was offered in the dry accounts of the two institutions. They were merely recorded and buried, as is so much anomalous evidence. So, there is actually some evidence of earlier "modern" civilization, but it is sketchy and scattered . . . and far less impressive than, say, a scorched collection of skyscrapers or sediment-covered space shuttle might be.

Still, the trinitrite is out there, with more being found all of the time.

Just because we all believe it, doesn't make it so.

Sir Robert

Very interesting Oppenheimer quote, I hadn't heard that.

Also, as to anamolous finds, geologically speaking, we'd be very fortunate to find significant evidence of our civilization existing past a few hundred thousand years. If the Earth became barren of water, or froze up in an apocalyptic ice age, it would preserve a significant part, but when you're talking 100 million years, you're seeing geologic processes begin to really remove the evidence. Odd note on the Carboniferous artifacts, they are in a depositional environment ideally suited for long term preservation.

The only drawback to that is that organisms buried in an organic rich reducing environment can undergo replacement fossilization by compounds such as pyrite, which could look like jewelry or a pot depending on the organism.

I've run into some iron oxide forms in solid granite that have looked pretty odd, but for artifacts, that would be an indication of objects being carried through the subduction and partial melting cycle.

One thing that has always intrigued me was the little solid gold delta wing "aircraft" found in Incan (?) ruins. those were bizarre, and a few years back they found some petroglyphs near here in Contra Costa County that were shut up tight as all get out immediately after one CCTimes story. I read the story (and saved it somewhere) and saw the picture the photographer had snapped. The first thought that came to my mind was "B24 Liberator". It was that spot on, twin boom tail, 4 engine nacelles... and the caption read "petroglyph of a bird". Primitive man, even in his stick figure glory days, wasn't that far off on the drawing skills...

I've heard not a peep about that site since.