Top 10 Ancient Gadgets You May Not Have Heard About

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1. Antikythera Mechanism

The Ancient Gadget Antikythera mechanism is an ancient Greek analogue computer and orrery used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendar and astrological purposes. It could also track the four-year cycle of athletic games which was similar (though not identical) to an Olympiad, the cycle of the ancient Olympic Games.


The device was found housed in a 340-millimetre (13 in) × 180-millimetre (7.1 in) × 90-millimetre (3.5 in) wooden box. It is a complex clockwork mechanism composed of at least 30 meshing bronze gears. A team led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth at Cardiff University used modern computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning to peer inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism and read the faintest inscriptions that once covered the outer casing of the machine. Detailed imaging of the mechanism suggests that it had 37 gear wheels enabling it to follow the movements of the moon and the sun through the zodiac, to predict eclipses, and even to model the irregular orbit of the moon, where the moon’s velocity is higher in its perigee than in its apogee. This motion was studied in the 2nd century BC by astronomer Hipparchus of Rhodes, and it is speculated that he may have been consulted in the machine's construction. Its remains were found as one lump, later separated into three main fragments which are now divided into 82 separate fragments after conservation works. Four of these fragments contain gears, while inscriptions are found on many others. The largest gear is approximately 140 millimetres (5.5 in) in diameter and originally had 223 teeth.
The artefact was discovered on 17 May 1902 by archaeologist Valerios Stais, among wreckage retrieved from a wreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera. The instrument is believed to have been designed and constructed by Greek scientistsand has been variously dated to about 87 BC or between 150 and 100 BC or to 205 BC or to within a generation before the shipwreck, which has been dated to approximately 70-60 BC. Learn More Here

2. Coso Artifact

The Coso artifact is an object claimed by its discoverers to be a spark plug found encased in a lump of hard clay or rock on February 13, 1961, by Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell while they were prospecting for geodes near the town of Olancha, California, and long claimed as an example of an out-of-place artifact.

If a spark plug is encased in a 500,000-year-old "geode," this finding would represent a substantial scientific and historical anomaly, as spark plugs were invented in the 19th century. Critics have argued, however, that the concretion, not geode, containing the Coso artifact can be explained by known natural processes and credible evidence for it being 500,000 years old is completely lacking. Learn More

3. Baigong Pipes

The Baigong Pipes are found on almost any list of “Out of Place Artifacts” — anachronistic objects that seem to defy explanation.

The Baigong pipes, which are also known as 白公山鐵管 (Bai Gongshan Iron Pipes) and Delingha pipes, are a series of pipe-like features identified as fossil trees or tree roots found on and near White Mountain (白公山), transliterated as Mount Baigong (Báigōngshān), about 40-kilometer (25 mi) southwest of the city of Delingha, in the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China.

4. Ancient Sandstone Xylophone :

World’s Oldest Rock Band: Ancient Sandstone Xylophone.

People have been playing rock music far before Elvis and the Beatles. These elliptical stones which go back to the New Stone Age (8000-2500 BCE) were once thought to be grain processors. They dwelled in the storeroom of the Natural History Museum in Paris since the mid twentieth century. By possibility, a paleontologist tapped one with a hammer in 1994 and heard a reverberating melodic note – and he all of a sudden understood that these stones were old melodic instruments.

The archaeologist who made the discovery, Erik Gonthier, had to work for several years to convince the scientific community that the stones were more than agricultural tools. Gonthier dug some pieces of foam out of the trash and put them under the stone as rests. He tapped the stone with a mallet again and the same musical tone rang out. They were eventually classified as lithophones, a combination of the words for “stone” and “sound.” The image above shows a lithophone setup called the Skiddaw Stones which resides in the Keswick Museum in England.
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5. Roman Dodecahedra

A Roman dodecahedron is a little empty question made of bronze or stone, with a dodecahedral shape: twelve level pentagonal appearances, each face having a roundabout gap of shifting distance across in the center, the openings associating with the empty focus. Roman dodecahedra date from the second or third hundreds of years AD.

About a hundred of these dodecahedra have been found from Wales to Hungary and Spain and to the east of Italy, with most found in Germanyand France. Ranging from 4 to 11 centimetres (1.6 to 4.3 in) in size, they also vary in terms of textures. Most are made of bronze but some are made of stone. A Roman icosahedron has also come to light after having long been misclassified as a dodecahedron.

6. Mystery Аirplanes

Still a mystery...

7. Phaistos Disc

The Phaistos Disc (also spelled Phaistos Disk, Phaestos Disc) is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium B.C.). The disk is about 15 cm (5.9 in) in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols. Its purpose and meaning, and even its original geographical place of manufacture, remain disputed, making it one of the most famous mysteries of archaeology. This unique object is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion.

The disc was discovered in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, and features 241 tokens, comprising 45 distinct signs, which were apparently made by pressing hieroglyphic "seals" into a disc of soft clay, in a clockwise sequence spiraling toward the center of the disk.
The Phaistos Disc captured the imagination of amateur and professional archaeologists, and many attempts have been made to decipher the code behind the disc's signs. While it is not clear that it is a script, most attempted decipherments assume that it is; most additionally assume a syllabary, others an alphabet or logography. Attempts at decipherment are generally thought to be unlikely to succeed unless more examples of the signs are found, as it is generally agreed that there is not enough context available for a meaningful analysis.

 Minoan art, Crete, Phaistos Disc, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (2nd millennium B.C.), Side A, Fired clay, It has 45 hieroglyphic characters engraved on both sides, along with mobile elements in spiral arrangement from the outside toward the center, Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. (Photo by Prisma/UIG/Getty Images)[/caption]
Although the Phaistos Disc is generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists, a few scholars believe that the disc is a forgery or a hoax.
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8. Byzantine iPad

The 9th-century wooden object is about the same shape (though not thickness) of an iPad, and was a notebook -- and tool - in one.

Turkish archaeologists excavating a harbor site on the European side of the Bosphorus have unearthed a 1,200-year-old wooden object which they claim is the ancient equivalent of a tablet computer. The device was a notebook and tool - in one.

The Byzantine invention was found within the remains of one of the 37 ships unearthed in the Yenikapi area of Istanbul, a site which has been at the center of excavations for the past 10 years.

Also known as Theodosius Port, it was built in the late 4th century during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I and become the city's most important commercial port.

9. Baghdad Battery

The Baghdad Battery or Parthian Battery is a set of three artifacts which were found together: a ceramic pot, a tube of one metal, and a rod of another. It was discovered in modern Khujut Rabu, Iraq, close to the metropolis of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian (150 BC – 223 AD) and Sasanian (224–650 AD) empires, and it is considered to date from either of these periods.

Its origin and purpose remain unclear,[2] and further evidence is needed to explain its purpose. It was hypothesized by some researchers that the object functioned as a galvanic cell, possibly used for electroplating, or some kind of electrotherapy; but there is no electrogilded object known from this period. An alternative explanation is that it functioned as a storage vessel for sacred scrolls.

10. Dropa Stones

The Dropa stones, otherwise known as the Dzopa stones, Dropas stones or Drop-ka stones, are said by some ufologists and pseudoarchaeologists to be a series of at least 716 circular stone discs, dating back 12,000 years, on which tiny hieroglyph-like markings may be found.[1][2] Each disc is claimed to measure up to 1 foot (30 cm) in diameter and carry two grooves, originating from a hole in their center, in the form of a double spiral.[3] The hieroglyph-like markings are said to be found in these grooves. No record of any of these discs being stored in any museum in the world has ever been found, and they are believed to be a hoax.