The Out-of-Place Artifacts Iceberg | PART 7

Roman coins in Japan. As the name of the entry suggests, Roman coins have actually been discovered in what's now Japan. So basically, the furthest they could possibly get from their starting point, at least in the old world. And this groundbreaking find occurred only pretty recently, in 2016. And there's yet another weird aspect to it. There's a huge time gap between when the coins were first minted in the 4th century A.D. and the context they were found in. A medieval 12th to 15th century castle on Okinawa named Katsurin Castle. So in Okinawa was its own independent set of warring kingdoms that were building these unique castles called Gusuku. And this is one of the best preserved examples of the bunch. And on top of that, other far more recent coins, also from the Mediterranean, were also discovered with them. More specifically, an Ottoman coin dated to 1687 or 1688. So after it's thought that the castle was already abandoned, which just makes everything even more puzzling, eh? Like, what is going on here? The coins themselves aren't really that much to look at. Mainly, they're just extremely worn. It's hard to even make out the emperor's bust on most of them. But they're definitely late Roman bronzes, which are extremely common, even today, given the insane inflation the Romans were plagued by at the time. In fact, the very first ancient coin I ever bought was a way nicer example of one of these, and it only set me back 10 bucks. It's theorized that the best preserved coin belongs to Constantius II, one of Constantine the Great's sons, which makes sense, because his coins are still insanely common. I've even tried my hand at cleaning some, and the simple big-chin silhouette definitely matches. And after staring at it for way too long, I think I can almost make out the letters C-O-N here. But I might just be going crazy. That obviously begs the question, how in the world did these little coins, almost worthless in their own time, get all the way to Okinawa? And though I don't have an exact answer, I mean, no one does, there's some evidence they probably came from trade with China. But first off, these coins almost certainly didn't make their way straight to Japan any time close to the 4th century, especially since the little horde they were a part of also contained the Ottoman coin, minted after Japan had already embraced Sakoku in the Edo period, closing itself off entirely from European trade, except for with the Dutch. We're given a single island off Nagasaki called Deshima. But beyond that, nada. By 1687, when the Ottoman coin dates to, the Satsuma domain on Kyushu had already forced the kingdom of Ryukyu, based on Okinawa, to become its vassal. So these things probably didn't come straight from Europeans. Instead, it seems more likely that they were brought by visiting Chinese merchants. Maybe an oddball with a penchant for old coins, since the people of Katsurin Castle were known to be heavily involved with China. Ming dynasty coins and pottery dating to the 14th and 15th centuries have even been found there too, which makes sense since the founder of the Ming dynasty, Hong Wu, made the Ryukyuan kingdom a tributary of his. And for centuries, trusted Chinese court eunuchs were sent over to crown Ryukyuan kings. In exchange for some horses and some sulfur, Hong Wu sent them thousands upon thousands of pieces of porcelain and iron tools. He even sent over some of his human capital. Over 36 families from coastal Fujian province were sent over to manage maritime trade. So maybe one of those guys, or maybe some Chinese merchant who came along later, just happened to have a coin collection. I don't know. That, of course, still begs the question, why would an ancient Roman coin be in medieval China, let alone Japan? The thing is, coins and other small Roman artifacts like that aren't totally without precedent in China. Which shouldn't be too much of a surprise, since we've already covered how the iconic Roman dodecahedron may have also filtered into China from trade with Southeast Asia, where Roman coins were even deliberately imitated in local jewelry, which makes sense since it also received a ton of Roman imports, especially glass. But usually, the ones from Southeast Asia are from the empire's 2nd century apogee. Some sources say that only a single genuine Roman coin from the 3rd century has ever been found in Southeast Asia, namely this Antoninianus, found in Uthong, Thailand, but minted in Cologne by the Gallo-Roman emperor Victorinus. But there's a whole assortment of later ones from Angkor Borei in Cambodia, some of which closely match the ones from Okinawa. Strangely, the story in China itself is completely different. Some 100 or so Roman coins have been found there, but absolutely none of them are from before around the 4th century. At least one example does belong to the same general era as the late Roman bronzes from Okinawa, like this 4th century bronze Nummus, minted by Argai Constantius II in Alexandria, Egypt, that's very similar to the ones from Okinawa, and that was found in Kargilik in Xinjiang. But a century before its creation, Han China had collapsed, and at the time, the area was outside of the Chinese orbit. It's now in the British Museum, in case you were wondering. Go figure. There's also this bronze coin of Theodosius the Great, that was found on Ba Vi Mountain near Hanoi in 1942. And at times, that area of Vietnam was under Chinese rule. But regardless, this coin is now lost. In general, the bulk of the Roman coins from the Chinese heartland are from much later than the Japanese coins, and come in the form of much more precious golden solidi, like the real high rollers in the Byzantine Empire used. I'll give you a few examples. In 1977, some golden Eastern Roman solidi, including some minted by Leo the Thracian of the early 5th century, along with four silver Sassanid Persian coins, were found in Inner Mongolia. And jumping to 2013, coins minted by the famously frugal emperor Anastasius I were found in what's thought to be the grand tomb of his immediate contemporary, Emperor Jemin of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and that's in Luoyang, Henan province, sometimes called the eastern starting point of the Silk Road. Though this next tidbit is also completely unrelated to everything else, but apparently, Jemin faked being deaf and mute for eight years before becoming emperor. He immediately dropped the facade when he was asked for the job, which I thought was interesting. But anyways, as recently as 2017, two more Byzantine gold coins, minted by Anastasius and Justinian I in Constantinople, were found in a noble's tomb at Xi'an in Shaanxi, along with some even earlier Persian pieces. And the tomb they were in dates to the Western Wei Dynasty, which was around right after the Northern Wei Dynasty of Jemin. And these are just a few among a hundred Roman coins from the 5th to 8th centuries dug up in China since the 1800s, and most belong to Anastasius I, Justin I, and Justinian I, three emperors who ruled in succession at the peak of the early Byzantine Empire in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. A 2015 study shows that these finds are mainly concentrated within Xinjiang, Ninsha, and Shaanxi. And interestingly, they're often used as ornaments in tombs, and there's at least one instance where it was found placed in someone's mouth, and others where they're found grasped in people's hands or covering their eyes. It's amazing to think that artifacts from so far away, bearing imagery that can't have been fully understood by the people who wound up with them, still had so much significance to them. And sometimes their designs were even mimicked by Chinese artisans. Here's one that seems to have been copied from a solidus of the great 7th century warrior-emperor Heraclius, with his son, Heraclius Constantine, by Sogdians in Central Asia, which is pretty cool. So not necessarily Chinese, but this one here at least seems to be the real deal. And at first you might think that these coins only could have filtered in through third parties, but no, we know that Romans actually did make their way over to China. The most famous and seemingly most deliberate attempt at reaching China from Rome occurred in the year 166, when a group of people from Daqin, or Tatsin, the Chinese name for the Roman Empire, that were reportedly sent by one Emperor Andun or Antun, probably Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, are recorded in various Chinese records as presenting gifts like rhinoceros horn and elephant ivory and tortoise shell to the Han Emperor Huan. And you probably know about that, because that's the most famous instance of that happening. But surprisingly, Romans showed up in China two more times during the very chaotic 3rd century. In 226, some Roman merchant called Xin Lun, in Chinese records, showed up in Vietnam and was sent from there to the court of Sun Quan, Emperor of Eastern Wu, one of the three kingdoms China had just fractured into. He was sent home with a bunch of dwarves for some reason. And then there's some oblique references to how sometime between 280 and 290, the Romans, possibly under the Emperor Carus, sent an envoy to offer tribute to Emperor Wu of the Jin Dynasty. But that's about all we know. No official Chinese sources seem to mention any 4th century embassy showing up, but centuries later, in the year 643, an embassy sent by the young Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II, or one of his regents, came to the court of the Tang Emperor Taizong, where they gifted him some red glass and green gemstones. The Chinese distinguished the Eastern Roman Empire as Fulin, as opposed to Daqin. And there even seems to have been some confusion over whether or not they were the same country. Even later, in 1081, Emperor Michael VII, called something like Miele-i-Lin-Kaisa, or Michael Caesar, sent a high official over to gift some horses, swords, and pearls. Or rather, the embassy he sent years earlier finally arrived, because he was deposed in 1078. And two more embassies arrived ten years later, in 1091. The description of this event, from the late 13th century, contains a neat little insight into what set the Roman coins the Chinese may have seen, apart from the ones they were used to. It was said that they cast gold and silver coins, without holes. However, on the pile, they cut the words Miele Fu, which is a king's name. The people are forbidden to counterfeit the coin. In another 13th century work, it seems the way all those golden coins wound up in China, apart from these embassies, was understood. When the envoys of neighboring countries arrive at their furthest frontier, they are driven by post to the royal capital, and, on arrival, are presented with golden money, i.e. the sorts of bribes emperors would have to give invading armies, to get them to leave. And it seems that these Chinese sources had enough info about dealing with the Romans to build up some stereotypes around them. Like, for instance, they were supposed to be good physicians, especially when it came to eye diseases. And it was noticed that they refrained from trade on the seventh day of the week, i.e. Sunday, and this was to carouse all night instead. But despite how early the coins from mainland Southeast Asia are, and how late the coins from China tend to be, there are striking parallels to the Okinawa coins that have been found all over Indonesia, of all places. Specifically, East Java. In 2017, a ton of 3rd to 4th century Roman bronze coins, along with some Chinese ones, were dredged up out of the Brontes River near Trolon by gold panners, including multiple from Constantius II that are about a dime a dozen in the West. But they're as out of place here as they are in a medieval castle on Okinawa, since Trolon was once the great city of Majapahit, the center of what was once the Majapahit Empire, which was also medieval. The 11 Chinese coins found with them also date to the 8th to 13th centuries, so significantly later. But let's return to Japan for a moment, because I'm happy to say that these coins aren't where the Rome-Japan connection stops. In fact, there are several other fascinating and more luxurious objects originating in the Roman Empire, mostly the Eastern Roman Empire, that we know made their way to the home islands of Japan, much closer to when they were first made. And the most common expression of this is in glass. 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But best of all, you can get it for 10% off using my own special promo code, FerroNerd10 using the link in the description below. So check out the book, and without further ado, let's get back to some older, more out-of-place pieces of art. Glass beads and tableware made by Mediterranean workshops have been found in both Japan, Korea, and even Indonesia again. The beads often belong to a special type of glass referred to as gold glass, or gold in glass. They've been found on Bali in Indonesia. In Korea, hundreds have been found, and mainly in the royal tombs of ancient Balhae and Shilla. And in Japan, they've been unearthed in various Kofun, the great burial mounds of Japan's early elites from when the Yamato state that would later become Japan was just starting to coalesce. And then there's another type of bright blue bead made using cobalt, which likely came from sources in either Egypt, Tehran, Eastern Anatolia, or the Caucasus. But those are just little pieces. I'm even more interested in the complete glassware that survived. Because imagine how much of a pain in the ass it would have been to bring a glass from the Roman Empire to Japan with nothing but horses and carts and ships, without it breaking somewhere along the way. The shipping fees must have been astronomical. And there are multiple examples of these. This pristine plate and bowl were found right next to the head of the person buried in grave number 126 of the Nizawa Senzuku burial mound cluster in Asuka, which should be a familiar name to you if you've watched part 5, because it's an ancient imperial capital, hiding a bunch of interesting mysteries, like the famous Masuda no Iwafune, another one of our ruparts. The burial mound dates to the second half of the 6th century, in the middle Kofun period, so all those golden coins are still filtering into China. The plate looks bare now, but it was once decorated with a bunch of sort of crude little designs using golden paint. Like there's a little bird in the center, this guy leading a horse, and some heart-shaped flowers and trees. It's been theorized that they were painted onto the plate by a Persian craftsman, as it was traveling eastwards, or maybe even in China, possibly in imitation of Roman golden glass from the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. And based on its type, the bowl itself is thought to date to sometime between the 3rd century and the early 5th century, especially because it's strikingly similar to other pieces from Khoranas in the Bayum area of Egypt. And there is an arguably even more impressive piece of possibly Eastern Roman craftsmanship made of alkaline lime glass stored in the ancient treasure house of Todaiji Temple in Nara, the next capital of Japan after Asuka. For most of the year, it's locked behind the imperial seal, which sounds pretty badass, but luckily some of its treasures are exhibited for visitors every fall. This deep blue cup, decorated with rows of circular coils, and with a silver base, possibly added on later, is one of three foreign made glasses gifted to the emperor Shomu by subjects of his returning from China in the mid-8th century that were then stored in the Shoso Inn, with all the emperor's other belongings by his widow, Empress Komyo. It's also theorized to be from Sassanid or even early Islamic Persia, or slightly less excitingly Central Asia, where glassmaking traditions from all over the place could have come together. And I can't ignore the fact that there's a bunch of other impressive, typically Persian glasses also preserved in the Shoso Inn. Amazingly, it also seems that the sort of motifs typically seen on the Sassanid's famous silver dishes, like a horseman shooting his bow at a lion, were seen and imitated in silk. And the pieces that show these were likely made in China. And motifs from the classical world itself also seem to have come into Japan, woven into silk textiles. Like on this piece of matting, for use in the hall of a Buddhist temple called a Joku, now stored among thousands of other ancient textiles, again, in the Shoso Inn. It depicts a whole assortment of things, surrounding a big flowering tree. Like these peacocks, and these roaring lions, with some people trying to restrain them. For thought to be depictions of African animal trainers. Unfortunately, but maybe even more interestingly, it probably wasn't made in the Roman Empire itself. Instead, it's thought to be an imitation of Roman work made in either Central Asia or China. Anyways, I'm happy to say that the coins we started with are on display, and just a stone's throw away from where they were found. Since they're now in the historical center adjacent to Katsurin Castle. So after saying all of that, I can't not put them in the genuine category. The... Klerkstorp Spheres! What a great name, eh? And it's perfect for the sort of sci-fi-esque claims that surround these strange little balls. Because the first thing you'll see when you look them up is the fact that these things are some 2.8 to 3.1 billion years old. Billion with a B. Dating back to the Mesoarchean Era. So billions of years before complex life emerged. But, they're obviously artificial. I mean, just look at how round they are in the strange little parallel lines circling around their mid-sections. So they must be proof of some long, long-gone, history-breaking ancient civilization. Or at least that's what countless slop videos and Facebook brain rot would have you think. But I'm just gonna come straight out of the gate with this. These things are not artificial. In fact, they're examples of natural phenomena we've already covered, like, three times already in earlier episodes. Because people just constantly misinterpret them as the only traces of incomprehensibly old civilization that have to be as old as the ancient rocks they're made up of. And I'm, of course, talking about concretions. When enough of something like silica or carbonate rock like calcium cements after being carried into place by water, or an aqueous solution, as some geology nerds say, they can form these sort of hard, rounded masses that are more resistant to weathering than the rocks surrounding them. And crystallize often around some sort of nucleus. Like in many instances, they form around fossils. And the Klerksdorp Spheres are nothing special. They're very similar to, and often compared with, another famous set of concretions in the states known as the Mokwe Marbles, found in the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone of Utah. And they're both made up of similar iron oxides, like hematite and gothite. NASA's even found these same sorts of iron oxide concretions on Mars, of all places. So I guess we're not beating the alien allegations this time. They're called Martian Blueberries. Interestingly, it's been theorized that autotrophic microorganisms might have been the catalyst for the formation of these concretions. So maybe in Mars' case, this actually does involve aliens. Little teeny tiny ones. But these are arguably even less interestingly shaped than these calcerous concretions called Button Rocks, from rural Schoharie County in upstate New York. There are also even bigger Devonian examples from Ohio, of all places. Showing the same longitudinal grooves that you can see on the Klerksdorp spheres. On top of that, concretions that are nearly the same age, at 2.7 to 2.8 billion years old, have been discovered in the Hammersley Basin of Australia. Which is also thought to have been formed by extremely early microbial activity. Possibly even suggesting that there might have been an explosion of light way back in the late Archean. So billions of years ago. Which is just crazy. Granted, the geological theories explaining their origins are definitely a bit more boring than the more popular theories about them. Which include the ideas that they're ancient information storage devices, or relay boosters for alien surveillance. Or the only bits of ancient alien spacecraft to survive crash landing into South Africa. Or even eggs, used as part of alien attempts at seeding life throughout the universe. As far as I know, no aliens have popped out of these things yet. So I'm not so sure about that. And that's all compounded by claims that they rotate on their own. Or they're made up of some unknown metal alloy. Or that they're somehow perfectly round. Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Which are all completely baseless. Anyways, here's what there is actually to know about these things and why they have those weird grooves. These 3-10cm wide nodules are from northern South Africa. And they're named after a town close to where they're found. Apparently, it's actually pronounced Clarksdorp. But, I don't care. They're actually from deposits of a material called Pyrophyllite. Also branded as Wonderstone. I didn't know you could brand stones, but apparently you can. And they're found at the Gestapo de Fontaine quarry just to the north of a place called Autostop. But since it's smaller than Klerkstorp and its name isn't as fun, I assume it's not as good for marketing. These spheres also occurred in just one very narrow layer of the much larger and very ancient Dominion Group formation, which is a volcano sedimentary sequence that just happens to lie right under one of the largest deposits of gold in the world called the Witwatersrand Reefs. This began as layers of volcanic lava interspersed with sediments brought from floods before being metamorphosized over time by the immense pressure and heat of the earth into pyrophyllite, the exact same sort of fine-grained material these concretions are often found in. And the strange lines you see on these Klerkstorp spheres are reflections of the fine layers of sediment, or laminae, in which these concretions grew. These laminae often inhibited the growth of the spheres because they were even finer-grained than the sediments above and below them, so these concretions would grow at a slightly slower rate within those thin, less permeable layers, creating these groups, in a process similar to what happens when you put something in a mold. And finally, as you've been able to see, they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and many aren't nearly as seemingly artificial as the one at the top of the Wikipedia page that everyone always uses to illustrate these things. Or they just shamelessly use crappy AI imitations of it. I mean, come on. Look at these examples I found while searching through photos at the Klerkstorp Museum, where they're held. Yeah, they're not too impressive. I just don't think this is super-advanced ancient alien technology or anything like that. Honestly, they just look like a bunch of rocks. So in conclusion, these things aren't really that out of place at all, and they're going squarely in the misinterpretations category. The Koso Artifact. Okay, so this one's pretty straightforward. It's a really, really crusty old piece of junk. But it's on this list because some people like to try selling it as yet another example of random artifacts found embedded in rocks that prove there was super-advanced intelligent life on Earth, probably, aliens, at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago. Just think of the London Hammer, or the Nampa Figurine, or the Klerkstorp Spheres, or countless others. And not unlike the Klerkstorp Spheres, this is actually just yet another concretion. I know, right? What are the chances? It's a spark plug made by the Champion Auto Parts Company sometime in the 1920s that would have been used in the engine of something like a Ford Model T. So right off the bat, it isn't exactly alien technology. But here's why it's made such a big hubbub. On February 13th, 1961, three people named Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey, and Mike Mikesell were out searching for geodes to supply the rock shop they co-owned together in Olancha, California, a small town just west of Death Valley. In the process, they found what looked to be a 2 by 3 inch geode around 6 miles northeast of a place called Owens Lake, in the Koso Mountains, hence the name. I should also mention that this thing was found pretty high up, 340 feet above the lake and 4,300 feet above sea level. The next day, they reportedly ruined a nearly new diamond saw blade while trying to cut through it. Plenty of AI sh** has been pumped out to visualize this as if the thing was actually a geode, but it wasn't. Inside the cut nodule, Mikesell found a circular section of very hard white material that appeared to be porcelain. In the center of the porcelain cylinder was a 2mm shaft of bright metal. The metal shaft responded to a magnet, and there were more inner layers surrounding that of what seemed to be decomposing copper and petrified wood. And then the outer crusty layer enveloping everything is composed of hardened clay containing pebbles and what have been called fossil shell fragments. They also found two more metal objects in the crust that looked a bit like a nail and a washer. One of the discoverers, Virginia Maxey, then, appropriately enough, wrote into Desert Magazine to describe the weird artifact and to report how she'd consulted a geologist who, according to her, said that the nodule must have taken at least 500,000 years to form, especially given the fossil shells. And that, hearsay, is all the proof people need to know that this thing proves aliens exist. I'm serious, there's literally no other proof that this thing isn't just... junk. Nevertheless, creationist researcher Ron Calais later x-rayed the object and revealed a tiny helix, or spring. The pictures he got out of this skyrocketed the object's popularity, and I can see why. Without the context, it seems pretty cool. But this is still just a spark plug. The base and packing nut, which hold the porcelain, are sealed with a copper and asbestos gasket, so I guess that's what the petrified wood is. And the central metal shaft is a magnetic electrode, so hence why it's magnetic. And then the substantial surface deposits on top of that are an inconsistent mix of eroded jumbled up materials without any geological context. And that's the solution endorsed by the higher-ups and the SPCA. No, not the animal organization, the Spark Plug Collectors of America. So you know, if those guys think this is one of theirs, it has to be the real deal. One former president of the club named Chad Windham said about looking at the x-ray that even though it was poor quality, it was like 100% no doubt in my mind that it was a champion. At that time, the 20s, they made more spark plugs than all the other companies combined. I still had a few questions. How did a Ford Model T wind up in this crazy remote desert? Obviously, the exact circumstances of this being dropped will always be a mystery, but the Koso Mountains were intensively mined from 1854, when gold was first found there by some Mormons, into the mid-20th century. So there were people at the right place and at the right time to lead this here. For example, not far away from the site of the Koso Artifacts discovery, there's a place called Modok Mine. And there's a shabby little old mining town near it, with its own mines, known as Darwin, which was once the leading source of lead in California and had millions of dollars worth of other stuff like gold, silver, and zinc, but now has a population of less than 30. To give you an idea of how remote it is, this place still had dial-up internet in 2012. And even closer to where the spark plug was found, and also northeast of Owens Lake, there's a completely abandoned ghost town, again used by miners, called Cerro Gordo. And in fact, the rotting husks of old cars are still sitting there, to this day. So maybe it came off one of those. Oh, and fun fact, this is the ghost town that the YouTube channel Ghost Town Living is based around, since it was bought by the channel's owner, Brent Underwood, back in 2018. Anyways, I was also thinking to myself, maybe you could use the argument that this is the only one of its kind, so maybe it is unique. But turns out, you can't, because multiple, extremely similar examples of crusty old spark plugs have been found elsewhere. Here's one some guy found at a beach and posted to Reddit, ironically insisting in the comments that it's unique. And then, after another couple minutes of looking through Google Images, I found this, also randomly found on a beach, which still clearly has the Champion logo on it. And here's a third one, found in a tide pool in San Diego. It even seems to have seashells of its own embedded into it, too. So like with the London Hammer we covered way back, just because something's melded with a dead mollusk doesn't mean it's super old. And this thing was way more crusty than the Koso artifact, apparently it took ten minutes to pound this out of its original matrix. It was just in sandstone. But there's one final argument you could use. All those examples I just gave were all found where there's a bunch of water, because concretions form where water is, and the Koso artifact was found in a hot, arid desert, and in mountains. However, the uplands of the Koso range still experience 5 to 6 inches of rainfall annually, and deserts in general still experience flash floods. Like for example, the reason why King Tut's tomb went undiscovered until 1922 is because it was continuously buried in debris brought from all the flash floods that continuously afflicted the Valley of the Kings. Plus, there's clearly enough water around the Koso range for lakes to form, albeit they've been mostly drained by the thirsty residents of L.A., and apparently that's part of the inspiration for the movie Chinatown, I don't know. There's even a notable and mineral-rich hot spring called Koso Hot Springs nearby, because this is a very volcanic area, and so the geology here generally consists of sedimentary stones interbedded with volcanic stone, so like with the Klerkstorp Spheres, this is the perfect environment for forming concretions. Oh, and also this is completely unrelated, but a really striking and rare mineral called phyolate, which is a type of iron-rich olive vine, occurs right here, and I'd argue these pieces are way more interesting than the Koso artifact. And there's even more to this desert, you'll see. But to wrap up the thrilling saga of the Koso artifact, it was missing for decades, because William Lane, one of the original three discoverers, had been keeping it on display in his house, before it eventually wound up in the back of his son's closet. Lane Sr. wouldn't let anyone analyze it up close, but he did offer it for sale at $25,000. But not anymore! Lane's daughter wound up moving to the Seattle area, and seems to have given it to a local software manager who spent hundreds of hours researching the Koso artifact, named Pierre Stromberg. I don't know how a guy gets a French first name and a German last name, but who cares? He seems chill. Thanks to his efforts, and as of 2018, the Koso artifact is on display for anyone to see in the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, in an exhibit dubbed, What is Reality? Very fitting. Or, at least that's what I would have said if I hadn't seen this Facebook post, which shows that the Koso artifact was pulled from display in March of 2020, you know, when COVID was just starting to hit. So honestly, I have no clue where it is now. Now, ironically, the Koso range actually does feature a ton of real, puzzling relics, but this time in the form of tens of thousands of ancient Native American petroglyphs. And this is one of the largest concentrations of petroglyphs in North America. Assumedly, they were made by various local peoples that were part of the Numic branch of the larger Udo-Aztecan family, related to the Shoshone and the Paiute, and they displayed depictions of everything from normal bighorn sheep to really enigmatic, complex scenes of strange figures that look like they've come straight out of a fever dream, with concentric circles for heads that might genuinely relate to ancient shamanic vision quests, hunting magic, or even what's been called a sheep cult. Oh, and the Koso artifact is 100% going into the misinterpretations category. And last, but certainly not least, the Palos Verdes stones. So you know how we were just talking about Romans going to China? Well now we're going to talk about the possibility that ancient Chinese seafarers may have gone to the Americans. Though I doubt it, and you'll see why in a sec. Twelve to twenty-five feet under the surface, a quarter mile off the Palos Verdes peninsula in southern L.A. County, there lies a scattering of some thirty strange stones, all with two to four inch wide holes bored into them. They were first discovered in the winter of 1974-75 by local divers named Robert Maestrol and Wayne Baldwin, and spread out across some large swath of seafloor. One source says two-thirds of an acre, another says three hundred feet, and yet another claims that they're spread out over several miles, from Point Furman to north of Point Vincente along the southern edge of the peninsula. But a year earlier, in 1973, another duo, two surveyors from the USGS named Dr. Gary Green and Dr. Roland von Huynh, had dredged up the first of these things, except this time it was on its own. This six inch thick stone doughnut was also found a bit further away from where the others were found, since it's from an area of seabed called the Patton Escarpment, south of Point Conception, west of Santa Barbara. This stone and the others from off Palos Verdes have been analyzed and tested multiple times, and the results of these seem to raise the possibility that they were potentially very old and potentially from very far away, from somewhere in China, but I'm putting an emphasis on potentially for a reason, this isn't set in stone. Got it? Anyways, the lone doughnut, as I like to call it, was sent to the USGS station in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where it was found to be covered by a layer of manganese three millimeters thick that might have taken natural sea processes as long as 3,000 years to create, so I guess like a thousand years per millimeter. And shortly afterwards, in 1977, samples from the stones were sent to the National University in Taiwan, where they underwent chemical testing by geologist Dr. Y. Wang. He identified the stone as a very fine-grained dolomite, or recrystallized dolostone, which are apparently rarely found along the California coast, but are apparently common in northern China. And samples from some of the five Palos Verdes stones that are known to have been salvaged were also tested at the request of one Professor James Moriarty III of San Diego University. I know it's suspect that he has the exact same name as the main Sherlock Holmes villain, but it seems like he is, or at least was, a respected marine archaeologist, and one of the main champions of the idea that these things really were ancient Chinese anchors. He even released a whole paper about it, entitled Stone Anchors, Asiatic Shipwrecks off the California Coast. I tried finding it, and I found other articles, but unfortunately this one eluded me. Two of the samples Moriarty had tested were apparently made by feldsparic sandstone cemented by calcium carbonate, which is apparently a common find on the southern coast of China. But another sample was found to be made of carbonaceous mudstone, possibly more specifically a piece of Monterey shale from Southern California, so not too surprising. The UC Santa Barbara Geology Department also analyzed some of the Palos Verdes stones in 1980 and concluded that they were made of cristobalite, which is also found in Monterey shale. Apparently somewhere along the way, some samples were sent to mainland China itself, too. But I'm not sure what the results for those were. So as a result of these findings, a bunch of people have since identified these stones as centuries or even millennia old Chinese anchors, proving that ancient or medieval Chinese sailors landed in the Americas well before Columbus did. But that's a bit difficult to definitively prove, since at the end of the day, they're just rocks with holes in them that could have maybe come from either China or the local neighborhood. So really, anyone could have dropped them off at any time. But Moriarty's student Larry Pearson even went on to claim that the anchors belonged to a convoy of ancient Chinese vessels that sunk in the area during a storm as far back as 2250 BC. For context, that's around when the Old Kingdom in Egypt was coming to an end, and centuries before the emergence of the Xia Dynasty, China's mythical first dynasty. Like this was when China was in the late Neolithic. Granted, Neolithic China was very sophisticated and made really awesome art, but I'm not sure if they had any reason to cross the Pacific. Other authors have asserted that they're 3,000 or 2,000 or 1,000 years old without any real justifications given, other than that they apparently resemble medieval or ancient Chinese anchors. But if you actually look up the surviving examples of ancient Chinese anchors, you'll see that many look way more conventional and way more impressive than these things. This source even explicitly says that even though the earliest known anchors in China were stone anchors, it is apparent that a single stone of a size that could be handled by a crew member was not sufficient to secure larger river or ocean-going junks, especially if there was a strong current, as in the case in many rivers in China, or rough coastal seas. I also haven't found any pictures of any ancient Chinese anchors that match the look of the Palos Verdes stones, and oftentimes they're just made out of wood, or wood lashed to unmodified stones, or big hulking pieces of metal, like these ones found off Vietnam. Plus, people across tons of different civilizations across time used stone anchors with little round holes poked through them, so why do these things even necessarily have to be Chinese? But I do have to admit that standard old Chinese junks have definitely made the journey from China to California before. Like this former Qing Dynasty pirate ship that made the trip in 1911, and was then converted into a floating Chinese restaurant. Or this humble ship, crewed by six people who'd never even sailed before, that traveled from Taiwan to San Francisco to enter a yacht race in 1955. But granted, that is just circumstantial evidence. So let's take a look at the alternatives, which seem a bit more reasonable to me. Archaeologist Frank J. Frost of the University of California Santa Barbara made the case that they were left by 19th century Chinese fishermen. He points out that many of the early Chinese immigrants to California around the time of the Gold Rush and to build railroads in the mid-19th century came from the Pearl River Delta around Guangzhou, and were experienced fishermen who built their own junks and sandpans out of redwood to fish off the coast, since at the time, other settlers had mostly ignored the coast's potential for fishing. He cites anthropologist Yves Armentaut-Ma of the University of California Davis, who researched the development of California's fishing industry by the Chinese, and interviewed a number of elderly fishermen who still remembered how stone anchors were used into the early 20th century. And these early Chinese fishermen were spread out from as far north as Vancouver Island to as far south as Cabo San Lucas, at the southern tip of Baja California. So they were definitely in the right area to be dropping these. And the huge concentration of just anchors off Palos Verdes, specifically around a reef once covered in a giant biodiverse kelp forest, now since destroyed by pollution, is a bit more indicative of a fleet of passing fishing vessels than a ship graveyard. Frost also claims that other stone objects, possibly identifiable as net weights, have been found off Palos Verdes as well, which makes sense since these fishermen primarily used nets. Only Frost mentions this, but apparently half of another locally made stone anchor was found on the eastern shores of San Clemente Island, just south of Palos Verdes, which is known to have been intensively frequented by both Chinese and Japanese abalone collectors. In fact, they established camps all around the Channel Islands, and traces of them still survive in the archaeological record. Another anthropologist, an archaeologist named Paul G. Chase, believes that the stones aren't Chinese at all, and that they actually come from the opposite end of the old world, in a way. He thinks that the stones were carved by 19th century Portuguese sailors from the Azores, who did indeed hunt whales off of Palos Verdes. There's even a place on the coast of Palos Verdes, facing where these stones would have been found, called Portuguese Point, next to something called the Old Whaling Station, so not a bad idea. Chase suggests that they used the stones to anchor down whale carcasses, or maybe they were part of some sort of pulley system meant to heave them aboard their ships. And then there's Long Beach oceanographer William Bascom, who was quoted as saying that all of this is absolute madness. If there's anything you don't want on a sailing ship, it's something that would roll. If you said that in a yacht club, they'd laugh you off the stage. Anchors are made as flat as can be! He also dismissed all the hubbub around the rocks as crackpot archaeology, but Moriarty retorted that the stones weigh in at between 40 and 1,200 pounds, though I have no idea how they determined that. And that point has still been cited as proof that they couldn't have actually been used by the sort of small fishing vessels Frost thinks they come from. Regardless, Bascom claimed that instead of anchors, they're actually just the product of shrimps pooping, because apparently mud shrimps and worms continuously defecate around their burrows, building up rings of calcium, which he claims are like those seen in the anchors. So apparently these are supposed to be some sort of fossil, and the Palos Verdes area is also notably rich in marine fossils from the Miocene, including fish, plants, and in one case, a whale skull. But the only problem is, I haven't seen any pictures of any other fossilized burrows that look anything like these. These crustaceans' burrows sort of look similar, but why would so many be in such a small area? And they can be way bigger and more complex than just one simple tube. But oddly enough, Bascom actually wrote in favor of even more ancient transpacific voyages from Japan to South America, because at the time he was writing, in the 80s, it was thought that the pottery of the Valdivia culture in Ecuador bore traces of having been influenced by the distinctive pottery of the Jomon of ancient Japan. But no, probably not. Number one, they don't even really look that alike, and number two, a lot of that theory was built on the idea that this particular style of pottery just suddenly appeared in Ecuador's archaeological record, but turns out they just hadn't excavated far enough down yet to prove that it didn't. But as an epilogue to all of this, that doesn't mean that Asian ships never washed up or even intentionally traveled to the west coast of the Americas in pre-colonial times. I know for a fact that up here in BC, indigenous peoples salvaged carbon steel from Japanese shipwrecks to make insanely cool swords. And the fact that the two shores are connected was made even more apparent when debris from the devastating tsunami that hit eastern Japan in 2011 wound up washing up on our shores shortly afterwards. There might also be a mention of the Americas in the 7th century History of the Liang Dynasty, or the Book of Liang, and that's because it preserves the account of a possibly 5th century traveling monk, possibly originating from Kabul in Afghanistan, called Huishan, who voyaged to a land 20,000 li east of the land of Tahan, or Dahan, itself variously identified as Buryatia in Siberia or Kamchatka, further east in Siberia. But it was also just a name for China itself. And this distant land was called Fusong. Fusong is described as having bamboo-like trees that grow a sort of red fruit, eaten by the land's locals, who use the tree itself to create things like thread, cloth, paper, and their houses. They even had their own system of writing, which they wrote using bark from the tree. But no fortresses, walls, or even war as a whole. They did have jails, though, apparently. Some authors have used these elements of the story to argue that Fusong is actually California, or even British Columbia, which it was actually called on some old French maps around the end of the 18th century, because the theory was popular with the French for a bit. Fusong has also been identified as Mexico, since the Fusong tree has been identified with agave, or the saguaro cactus. But based on the titles of officials mentioned in the text being Korean, and a part of the text mentioning how the people of Fusong had horses, which the Americas definitely did not have at the time, Fusong was almost certainly much closer to home, and identifiable with either northern Japan, the island of Sakhalin, or the Kamchatka Peninsula itself. So not exactly the Americas, but it's still cool a random Afghani guy went that far north in the late 5th century. And even though early trans-pacific trade mainly went from Spanish-ruled Mexico west, it's also known for a fact that the daimyo Date Masamune famously dispatched a samurai retainer of his to the Pope in Rome via Mexico. And before arriving in Acapulco in early 1614, his ship sighted Cape Mendocino in northern California. So here's what I've concluded from this. Because of how flimsy and in some cases non-existent the evidence is that these things actually involved the medieval or ancient Chinese, I'm going to toss the Palos Verdes stones into the misinterpretations category. Dang, it's getting sort of full. Of the five that were dredged up from the deep, a few broken ones lay in the boatyard at Maestrol's Dive Shop, Dive and Surf, and Redondo Beach, but one pickle-shaped stone is still currently sitting on display in the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, a small museum in Rancho Palos Verdes itself. And regardless of what it actually is, the plaque next to it identifies it as a stone anchor of the type used by Chinese ships more than 2,000 years ago. And now we've come to the part where I thank my esteemed patrons Van Diver, Boardlord, It's Premium, Yogg, Jane Geeky, Ice, Kate Dalglish, Lori Weeks, Brett O, CJ Carrera, Trico, Kevin Tuchowski, Alco, Nigel, Freddy Fazbear, Artill, Aspergirl, Dr. Kickass, Brandon Fint, DJPandaBear52, Non-Profit Prophet, Rebecca Baker, BoneGut, Rainy Porterfield, Toby, EggWorld3D, and our newest patrons Melody Ray, Emerson Fitts, Chandler Sealock, and Brady H. Thank you guys so much, you really help me out a lot. And keep your eyes peeled for the next video, which will be Part 2 of the Oldest Buildings Iceberg. And let me tell you, I have some nice old buildings lined up for you. Until then, see ya.