It can be hard to resist the allure of a mysterious object found in a context that doesn’t seem to make rational sense, suggesting that it’s proof of time travelers, lost civilizations or alien visitors. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist or a cryptozoologist to marvel at a bizarre computer-like device that dates back to Ancient Greece, or a 2,000-year-old battery found outside Baghdad in the 1930s.

So-called “Out of Place Artifacts,” also known as OOPArts, are often said to “baffle scientists,” and conspiracy theorists suggest that scientific efforts to identify their origin and purpose willfully ignore potentially controversial explanations outside the mainstream. After all, it’s true enough that science is constantly evolving, and we still don’t have the answers to many of life’s mysteries.

But imagine how everyday objects from our own times might be misinterpreted thousands of years from now if information about how they’re used doesn’t survive. A lot of artifacts become “out of place” because their original context might have provided important clues, but the object was moved and that context is lost.

When we’re so far removed from the original circumstances in which a historical object was created, it’s easy to let all sorts of things cloud our conclusions about what those objects represent.

Wishful Thinking

How do you explain a sarcophagus lid that appears to show a spaceship, primitive sculptures that look like airplanes or cave drawings resembling astronauts in space suits? Some proponents of “ancient astronaut” or “ancient alien” theories posit that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth thousands of years ago and made contact with humans, potentially influencing their technology. These visitors might have even been misinterpreted as gods, the theories muse.

The supposed proof of these theories lies in drawings like the petroglyphs of Val Camonica, Italy, which depict figures with ‘helmets’ around their heads that could just as easily be ceremonial headdresses or have some other, more down-to-Earth explanation. Ancient astronaut proponents also cite artifacts like a Mesopotamian cylinder seal that sort of looks like a spaceship, since it’s just sort of hovering there – although the first use of linear perspective wasn’t seen in art until the late 14th century, so the position of objects on a field in an ancient composition doesn’t necessarily mean anything significant.

A 1968 best selling book by Erich von Däniken interprets imagery on the lid of a stone tomb belonging to K’inich Janaab Pakal I (Pacal the Great), a Mayan ruler who died in the year 683 CE, as a depiction of extraterrestrial influence on the ancient Maya.

“In the center of the frame is a man sitting, bending forward. He has a mask on his nose, he uses his two hands to manipulate some controls, and the hell of his left foot is on a kind of pedal with different adjustments. The rear portion is separated from him; he is sitting on a complicated chair, and outside of this whole frame, you see a little flame like exhaust.”

…Or, Pacal could be sitting on a pillar in front of a stylized temple – among many other plausible explanations. What all of this shows us is the extent to which wishful thinking can alter our interpretations. If we really want to see the helmets of astronauts, that’s what we’ll see.

Technology, or its Inspiration?

It’s obvious how the so-called Helicopter hieroglyphs found in Abydos, Egypt got their name. Those images really do look like modern aircraft, right? Then there’s the Saqqara Bird, a sculpture made of sycamore wood discovered during the 1898 excavation of the Pa-di-Imen tomb in Egypt, which dates back to about 200 BCE. Some people have suggested that it might be evidence that ancient Egyptians developed the first aircraft many thousands of years ago (possibly with the help of aliens.) The Quimbaya Artifacts, a collection of tiny golden figurines found in Colombia and dated to around 1000 CE, look a lot like flying objects, too.

When it comes to investigating OOPArts, the best tool might just be Occam’s Razor: the principle that the simplest explanation is the most likely to be correct.

The simple explanation for all of these objects is that we’ve taken a lot of inspiration for our airplanes, helicopters, spaceships and drones from nature, and abstracted birds look a lot like planes. Archaeologists say the Quimbaya Artifacts are just highly stylized birds, insects and amphibians. The function of the Saqqara Bird is unknown because very little documentation of the period survives, but no credible evidence of Egyptian aircraft has ever been found. And though they might be the most puzzling, the Abydos “helicopter” hieroglyphs aren’t what they seem at first glance: the original carved images have been altered over time due to the carved stone being re-used over the centuries, creating overlapping images.

Imperfect Measurements

The Klerksdorp spheres discovered by miners in South Africa seemed like they had to be man-made, owing to their supposedly perfect proportions, but they were estimated to be 2.8 billion years old. Does that mean they’re evidence of advanced pre-human civilizations on Earth – whether some other species from this planet or extraterrestrial – as suggested by Michael Cremo, author of Forbidden Archaeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race? Nope.

Though they certainly look hand-carved, these spheres are far from perfect, and most geologists agree that they were naturally formed as concretions formed in volcanic sediments or ash. The grooves were likely produced due to the varying permeability of the layered sediments in which the stones were formed.

It’s pretty easy to confuse natural formations for man-made creations given the complexity of nature and its ability to surprise us. Just look at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, the faces we’re constantly seeing in rocks and many other misleadingly sculptural features.

Less Complex Than They Seem?

When the aforementioned Baghdad Battery was discovered in modern Khujut Rabi, Iraq, near the ancient metropolis of Ctesiphon (150-650 CE), it was really just three distinct objects: a fired ceramic container, an iron rod and a bit of rolled sheet copper. Wilhelm König, an assistant at the National Museum of Iraq at the time, thought it looked like a primitive galvanic cell, and theorized that it was used for electroplating gold onto silver objects.

About a decade later, a man named Willard Gray made a reproduction of the objects, put them together and filled the vessel with grape juice to prove its conductive properties. But if it is a battery, it’s not a particularly effective one, and it’s just as likely that the objects weren’t even meant to fit together in this way.

Though its origin and purpose are still unclear, most contemporary archaeologists don’t believe it’s a battery at all, noting that the vessel and rod might have just protected papyrus scrolls. Perhaps it’s helpful to remember that you can make all kinds of things that aren’t really batteries produce electricity, including potatoes.

Just Plain Fake

To the surprise of pretty much no one, a lot of supposed Out of Place Artifacts are just forgeries and hoaxes. When images of a clay object resembling a modern mobile phone emerged online in 2015 along with the explanation that it was discovered during a dig in Austria, eager theorists were quick to declare it obvious evidence of time travel. As it turns out, the “Babylonokia” is a sculpture by German artist Karl Weingartner.

But what about enduring mysteries like the Antikythera Mechanism, which is believed to be an ancient Greek analog computer used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses? The device, discovered among wreckage off the coast of the island of Antikythera, dates to sometime between 87 and 205 BCE and consists of a complex clockwork mechanism with at least 30 bronze gears. As far as we know, this is no hoax or misinterpretation. It’s certainly a lot more advanced than most of the surviving artifacts from that place and time, but makes use of contemporary Greek astronomy and mathematics.

Humans of Ancient Greece and roughly concurrent societies might not have had cars, air conditioning or wifi, but their technology was often more advanced than many of us imagine. All sorts of things could have been developed, used and then forgotten as civilizations rose and fell and so much of that all-important context disappeared over time.

Archaeology is a puzzle, and without all the pieces, we’re often just guessing. Which is why it’s important to note that scientific consensus can shift and change, too. Few conclusions are fully set in stone, so to speak, and we never know when we might receive new information that changes our perceptions.

From five lines of letters scrawled on the back of a dead man’s book to the taunting codes sent to police by the Zodiac Killer, some of history’s most legendary uncracked codes and ciphers represent a fascinating and frustrating challenge even for the world’s brightest cryptographers. Could the Beale Papers lead to buried treasure? How does the Chaocipher work? Perhaps we’ll never know.

Taman Shud Case

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Who was the Somerton man, how did he die, and what do these strange codes found on a book connected to the man mean? An unidentified male body was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia in 1948 wearing a sweater and coat despite the hot day, carrying no identification. There were no clues as to his identity and dental records and fingerprints matched no living person. An autopsy discovered bizarre congestion, blood in the stomach and enlarged organs but no foreign substances. A suitcase found at the train station that may have belonged to the man contained a pair of trousers with a secret hidden pocket, which held a piece of paper torn from a book imprinted with the words “Taman Shud”. The paper was matched to a very rare copy of Omar Khayyam’s ‘The Rubaiyat’ that was found in the backseat of an unlocked vehicle and on the back of the book was scrawled five lines of capital letters    that seem to be a code. To this day, the entire case remains one of Australia’s most bizarre mysteries.

Kryptos

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It’s like a tease, standing outside the headquarters of the CIA in daily view of some of the nation’s brightest cryptographers yet eluding them for years. The Krytpos monument is a sculpture by artist Jim Sanborn bearing an encrypted message divided into four sections, three of which have been solved since its installation in 1990. With misspellings in the code intact, the first part reads, “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion”, and the second part references some invisible buried treasure ostensibly located some 200 feet from the statue itself.

Zodiac 340 Letter

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The Zodiac Killer – whoever he is or was – is known just as much for the incredibly complex coded letters he sent to the Bay Area press as for his brutal unsolved murders. While some of his taunting ciphers have been solved, this 340-character message sent in 1969 has never been cracked.

Dorabella Cipher

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Sent by cipher enthusiast Edward Elgar to his friend Miss Dora Penny, the Dorabella Cipher seems upon viewing like it might not mean anything at all. But this string of strange symbols, made up of semicircles in various configurations, has been the subject of unfruitful study for over a century. Musicologist Eric Sams claimed to have solved it, but his methods are unproven and his translation is 22 characters longer than the cipher. Another speculation is that the code is not text, but a melody.

Chaocipher

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If an autobiography detailing the author’s memories of James Joyce seems like a strange place to find an uncracked cipher, that’s because it is. J.F. Byrne inserted his cryptosystem challenge into the book “Silent Years”, offering $5,000 to whoever solved it. At least three people know how Byrne’s Chaocipher – a machine small enough to fit into a cigar box used to encrypt the message – actually works, but no one has ever solved the code.

RSA Crytographic Challenges

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How can the crytpography industry get better at producing strong, uncrackable codes? RSA Laboratories, a security firm known for its cryptography libraries, decided to put forth a challenge that would force the industry to learn more about symmetric-key and public-key algorithms. The key to cracking a code lies in figuring out which two prime numbers were multiplied together to create it – which is much harder than it sounds. While many of the prizes were claimed, most of the bigger numbers have never been solved.

D’Agapeyeff Cipher

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Alexander d’Agapeyeff wasn’t even a cryptographer – having previously written a book on cartography, he decided to tackle cryptography in his second book, “Codes and Ciphers”, in 1939. On the last page of the book, he included a modest cryptogram “upon which the reader is invited to test his skill.” But modest or not, d’Agapeyeff’s code has remained uncracked for 70 years, putting this amateur into the same league as the world’s most gifted cryptographers.

The Beale Papers

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Want $40 million in buried gold, silver and jewels? All you have to do is solve an infamously “impossible” set of ciphertexts, one of which effectively provides that much-sought X on the map.  The treasure was reputedly buried in Bedford County, Virginia by one Thomas Jefferson Beale, who entrusted his encrypted ciphertexts to a local innkeeper. After the innkeeper’s death, a friend who was given the papers spent twenty years trying to solve the ciphers, finally completing the one that describes the treasure. Despite many tries, the two others have never been solved.

Shugborough Inscription

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O-U-O-S-V-A-V-V. These letters are carved into a stone monument directly below a mirror image of Nicholas Poussin’s  painting, The Shepherds of Arcadia, on the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England – but what do they mean? Popular fiction imagines that Poussin was a member of the Priory of Scion and that the inscription refers to the location of the Holy Grail, but nobody really knows. Perhaps they’re an acronym for Orator Ut Omnia Sunt Vanitas Ait Vanitas Vanitatem, a version of the biblical phrase “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity” – but perhaps not.

Chinese Gold Bar Cipher

(image via: iacr.org)

The images seem to show a series of gold bars covered in images, strange symbols, Chinese writing, an unidentified script and crytpograms in Latin letters. These gold bars were supposedly issued to a General Wang in Shanghai, China and deposited into a U.S. bank in 1933, but they’re so strange, the validity of the deposit is still disputed today. If someone can solve the script and codes, the dispute could be settled. Large images of all seven bars can be viewed at IACR.org.

Phaistos Disc

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From WebUrbanist’s “10 Most Amazing Ancient Objects of Mystery in History”: “There’s very little that we actually know for sure about the Phaistos Disc. It’s made of clay – check. It dates back to the second millennium B.C.E. – maybe. But its origin, meaning and purpose remain shrouded in mystery. Discovered in Crete, the disc is features i241 impressions of 45 distinct symbols, some of which are easily identifiable as people, tools, plants and animals. But because nothing else like it from the same time period has ever been found, archaeologists haven’t been able to provide a meaningful analysis of its content.”