Alain <kua### [at] videotronca> wrote:

> > For anyone who wishes to accept it.
> >
> > In one of my favorite books (Web of Angels, John M. Ford - 1980) the author
> > posits two types of history-changing artefacts that might be found.
> >
> > The first type, he names the Antikythera (a reference to the Antikythera
> > mechanism)
> >
> > The Antikythera is an artefact which re-defines the technological capabilities
> > or scientific prowess of an ancient civilization.
> >
> > The second type, he calls the Ozymandias. An Ozymandias is an artefact
> > discovered in the ruins of an ancient civilization which could not possibly have
> > come from that civilization.  The name comes from the poem by Percy Bisshe
> > Shelley, because "Nothing beside remains"
> >
> > The existence of an Ozymandias ostensibly points to an even older civilization
> > of which there is no previous record.
> >
> > So the challenge, for anyone who cares to attempt it, is to come up with an
> > artefact of one type or the other and put it in a suitable context.
> >
> > Regards,
> > A.D.B.
> >
> > P.S. Web of Angels is an excellent read, if you can find a copy.  It's arguably
> > the earliest example of Cyberpunk, prefiguring Gibson by three years, and I love
> > the idea of the galaxy-spanning computer network, which he calls The Web.
> >
> >
>
> Real life Ozymandias examples are some small figurines shaped like
> modern days jet fighters found in Maya and Aztec ruins. Testing them in
> wind tunnels reveal that they are stable in trans-sonic and super-sonic
> speeds.
> Another example is an old iron hammer found incased in a large rock that
> is so old that part of it's handle have started to turn into coal. It's
> age is estimated to be over 250000000 years.
>
>
> Alain

the London Hammer has been explained: http://paleo.cc/paluxy/hammer.htm

As for the Tolima figurines, when they "tested" them, they modified the
structure to remove pieces that obviously wouldn't work.

> I once read that for every credibility gap there's a gullibility fill,
> this does it for me: "When informed by an interviewer, in 1974, that the
> column was not in fact rust-free, and that its method of construction
> was well understood, von Däniken responded that he no longer considered
> the pillar or its creation to be a mystery."

Which degrades it from Ozymandias to Antikythera, or less.

This isn't supposed to be a thread about supposed real-life examples.  I was
trying to spark the creative process.

Here's another example from my own imagination:

Yggdrasil Complex is a decaying star-ladder that has been overgrown to the point
that it resembles a gigantic tree.  Depending on whether the surrounding natives
are descendants of the builders or immigrants, it could be either Type 1 or Type
2.

It's difficult to convey the story of an object in just one image, I suppose,
but that could be part of the challenge.

Regards,
A.D.B.

Post a reply to this message