Walk into any modern museum, or open any history textbook, and the picture of the past presented is one in which humanity started from primitive beginnings, and steadily progressed upward in the development of culture and science. Most of the artifacts preserved in archaeological and geological records have been neatly arranged to fit this accepted linear view of our past.

Yet many other tantalizing bits and pieces unearthed offer a very different story of what really happened. Called out-of-place artifacts, they don't fit the established pattern of prehistory, pointing back instead to the existence of advanced civilizations before any of the known ancient cultures came into being.

Though such discoveries with their inherent sophistication are well-documented, most historians would like to sweep these disturbing anomalies under the proverbial rug. But the rug of true history is getting very lumpy, and hard to step across without tripping over such obvious contradictions to the conservative picture of antiquity.

What's more, the mysterious artifacts confirm ancient legends and stories which describe human history not as linear, but cyclic. Forgotten ages and former worlds rose and fell in great cycles of life and death over millions of years, lost to our memory except in myths, and now, through a few amazing pieces left to us. Here are the top more than ten out-of-place artifacts and what they reveal to us about our missing legacy:

1.      Baffling Batteries of Babylon

2.      The Strange Electron Tubes from Dendera

3.      The Enigma of the Ashoka Pilar

4.      An out-of-place Computer from Antikythera

5.      Flight in Ancient Egypt

6.      A Jet from South America

7.      Crystal Skull from Atlantis

8.      Who shot the Neanderthal Man?

9.      The Incredible Stones of Dr. Cabrera

10.    Manufactured Metals Millions of Years Old

1. BAFFLING BATTERIES OF BABYLON

In 1938, Dr. Wilhelm Kong, an Austrian archaeologist rummaging through the basement of the museum made a find that was to drastically alter all concepts of ancient science. A 6-inch-high pot of bright yellow clay dating back two millennia contained a cylinder of sheet-copper 5 inches by 1.5 inches. The edge of the copper cylinder was soldered with a 60-40 lead-tin alloy comparable to today's best solder. The bottom of the cylinder was capped with a crimped-in copper disk and sealed with bitumen or asphalt. Another insulating layer of asphalt sealed the top and also held in place an iron rod suspended into the center of the copper cylinder. The rod showed evidence of having been corroded with acid. With a background in mechanics, Dr. Konig recognized this configuration was not a chance arrangement, but that the clay pot was nothing less than an ancient electric battery.

The ancient battery in the Baghdad Museum as well as those others which were unearthed in Iraq all date from the Parthian Persian occupation between 248 B.C. and A.D. 226. However, Konig found copper vases plated with silver in the Baghdad Museum excavated from Sumerian remains in southern Iraq dating back to at least 2500 B.C. When the vases were lightly tapped a blue patina or film separated from the surfaces, characteristic of silver electroplated to copper. It would appear then that the Persians inherited their batteries from the earliest known civilization in the Middle East.

2. THE STRANGE ELECTRON TUBES FROM DENDERA

In different locations within the Late Ptolemaic Temple of Hathor at Dendera in Egypt are curious wall engravings which Egyptologists cannot explain in traditional religio-mythic terms, but about which electrical engineers are finding very modern interpretations.

In one chamber, No. 17, the topmost panel, depicts Egyptian priests operating what look like oblong tubes, performing various specific tasks. Each tube has a serpent extending its full length inside. Swedish engineer Henry Kjellson, in his book Forvunen Teknik (Disappeared Technology), noted that in the hieroglyphs these serpents are translated as seref, which means to glow, and believes it refers to some form of electrical current.

In the scene, to the extreme right appears a box on top where sits an image of the Egyptian god Atum-Ra, which identifies the box as the energy source. Attached to the box is a braided cable which electromagnetics engineer Alfred D. Bielek identified as virtually an exact copy of engineering illustrations used today for representing a bundle of conducting electrical wires. The cable runs from the box the full length of the floor of the picture, and terminates at both the ends and at the bases of the tube objects. These objects each rest on a pillar called a djed, which Bielek identified as a high-voltage insulator.

The tube objects look very much like TV picture tubes, an impression which is not far from wrong, for electronics technician N. Zecharius has identified the objects as Crookes or electron tubes, the forerunner of the modern television tube.

Though the upper chamber scenes have been damaged by vandals from a later age, other pictures found inside the crypt below the Holy of Holies are almost perfectly preserved, and their portrayal deepens the mystery of the strange electron tubes even further. Here, not only are the tubes shown in full operation, but something else has been added which may suggest the ultimate purpose for the tubes themselves. In several instances, both men and women are shown sitting underneath the tubes, hands held out and cupped, which meant they were in a receptive mode. What kind of radiation treatment was being performed here?