Extensive quarrying was done near the city of Aix-en-Provence, France, between 1786 and 1788, to provide the large quantities of limestone required for the rebuilding of the Palace of Justice. In the quarry from which this limestone was taken, the rock strata were separated from each other by layers of sand and clay, and by the time the workmen and removed 11 layers of rock they found they had reached a depth of some 40 or 50 feet below the original ground level of the area.
Beneath the 11th layer of limestone they came to a bed of sand and began to remove it to get to the rock beneath. But in the sand they found stumps of stone pillars and fragments of half-worked rock - the same as they had themselves been excavating. They dug further and to their intense surprise found coins, the petrified handles of hammers, and pieces of other petrified wooden tools.
Finally they came to a large wooden board, seven or eight feet long and an inch thick. Like the wooden tools, it had also been petrified and been broken into pieces. When the pieces were reassembled, the workmen saw before them a quarryman's board of exactly the kind themselves used and worn in the same way as their boards were.
How a stonemason's yard, equipped with the kind of tools used in France in the late 18th century, had come to be buried 50 feet deep under layers of sand and limestone 300 million years old may never be known.
Bravo
Have you got a source for this article? A web link?
Seems very interesting, would love to read more on it
Raymond
I'm afraid not. It was part of a collection of stories about out of place artifacts that have been found and this seemed the most interesting one, so I used it.
Maybe if you 'googled' some the key words something might turn up.
Let us know if you have any luck won't you?
Raymond
Just out of interest, here's the complete text of that article on out of time artefacts:
Dr Wilbur Burroughs, head of geology at Berea College, Kentucky announced in 1928 that he had discovered 10 humanoid footprints in carboniferous sandstone.
The prints were 9 and a half inches long and 6 inches across the toes. Photomicrographs and infrared photography revealed no signs of carving or artificial marking in and around the prints.
The rock in which the prints were found was estimated to be 240 million years old.
In 1927 at Fisher Canyon, Nevada a fossil of a well-cut, double stitched leather sole was found by quarrymen. The rock was identified as Triassic limestone, 160 to 195 million years old.
In 1851 Hiram de Witt of Massachusetts accidentally dropped a fist-sized piece of gold bearing quartz that he had previously brought back from California. The rock was broken apart by the fall and inside it De Witt found a two-inch nail. "It was slightly corroded..But entirely straight and had a perfect head".
A nail partially embedded in a block of stone taken from a Scottish quarry was described at a meeting for the advancement of science in 1845.
Sir David Brewster, who gave the report, said that about an inch of a nail embedded, the rest lying along the stone and projecting into a layer of gravel.
The depth from which the nail was removed was not on record, but the quarry had been worked for twenty years prior to the discovery.
Another report from Scotland declares that workmen quarrying near the River Tweed found a piece of gold thread embedded in rock eight feet below ground level in 1844.
Researchers in the field of out of place artefacts often believe that the findings may be proof of extraterrestrial visitors. Evidence to support this, has been found, principally by Dr. Johannes Fiebag. The following text is taken from the article "SENSATIONAL FIND IN RUSSIA" By Hartwig Hausdorf from the Ancient Skies magazine.
"In the years 1991-1993, gold prospectors on the small river Narada, on the eastern side of the Ural mountains, have found unusual, mostly spiral-shaped objects. The size of these things ranges from a maximum of 1.2 in. down to an incredible 1/10,000th of an inch!
To date, these inexplicable artefacts have been found in their thousands at various sites near the rivers Narada, Kozhim, and Balbanyu, and also by two smaller streams named Vtvisty and Lapkhevozh, mostly at depths between 10 and 40 ft.
At the present time, these more-than-mysterious objects are being investigated by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Syktyvka (capital city of the former Soviet Republic of Komi), Moscow, St. Petersburg, and also a scientific institute in Helsinki, Finland.
Exact measurements of these often microscopically small objects have shown that the dimensions of the spirals are in the so-called Golden Mean ratio. Since ancient classical times this fraction has been the "iron rule" in architecture and geometry. Its usefulness is in the fact that if a certain length is divided into two using this ratio, the ratio of the original length to the larger piece is the same as that of the larger piece to the smaller piece.
As with all phenomena, researchers of Anomalous Fossils have very diverse and confusing theories to explain the fossils presence.
"Creationists" believe that the evidence points to proof of the ways of the Bible. Two groups of Creationists mounted expeditions to retrieve sets of prints from the bed of the Paluxy River in Texas. Allegedly the rocks show the tracks of a human being and a three-toed dinosaur crossing each other, one of the human prints squashes the edge of a dinosaur print.
UFO researchers, especially in the case of the Ural Mountains find, believe that OOP fossils are evidence of extraterrestrials and time travellers. Why a time traveller would walk barefoot in Triassic times will never be known!
david hobbs
Things like this do make you wonder if we really know anything about history at all.
Still I do love a mystery.
Raymond
It throws open the doors to all manner of possiblities. Ancient civilisations of which we know nothing right up to the more fanciful notions of time travel.
Absolutely fascinating.
david hobbs
I may have it a bit out of proportion but it seems that archaeologists can build an entire culture from a bit of pottery and a few bones.
They tend to keep quiet when it comes to something like this.
I am pleased they didn't opt for the medical profession.
Raymond
Modern science has an interesting way of either ignoring or debunking things it cannot explain.
david hobbs
I think it is a career protecting reflex.
It's a job like any other so why ruin your promotion chances.
