The Mystery Of The Time Travelling Hammer

Doug,

No problem - I'll be along to collect him shortly - or in a couple million years, depending on how you look at it. I need him for insect control anyhow - it's a jungle out here!


P.S. - Has anyone reported seeing my lepospondyl? It's an Ophiderpeton, and it looks kinda like this:



Don't kill it - it's not a snake, it's an amphibian. Like a frog. But without legs. maybe be a bit careful sitting on the sofa in the breakroom until I find it. Come to think of it, you might not want to fish for dropped change under the snack machines, either - you know... just in case... it's probably a good thing they don't make the pockets on these time-travel uniforms any bigger...

@ninurta, never fear, MysticWanderer is here!  And I located your cell phone! 

It's been retrieved by your fellow time-traveler that went into the year 1928.  

However, she has been making calls on it since she found it all those years ago, so you might want to think about not giving up all that money just yet. I think you are going to have an astronomical phone bill to pay when you two get back to the future.  

It doesn't really say whether it's still wood or not, or whether it only looks like wood after being petrified. I have a piece of a tree that is several million years old, but the wood has been replaced with some brown quartzite minerals so that now it's stone - but it still occupies the same space as the original wood, and has the same shape and form, right down to the cell walls. I've also seen charcoal from forest fires 314 million years ago or so which is still charcoal, and has never petrified - it's still bits of burnt wood. Accidents of preservation can be odd.

Hartmut Thieme found a total of 9 complete and whole wooden spears, still wooden, that were 400,000 years old in Schoeningen, Germany. another complete wooden spear, which is about 125,000 years old, was found in Lehringen, Lower Saxony, Germany, and there is a wooden spear tip that was found at Clacton-On-Sea, England, which is about 400,000 years old. Wooden artifacts like clubs and digging sticks were found at Kalambo Falls in Africa - but they are "only" about 50,000 years old. I only know these things because of my research into how to properly make pointy sticks. I figured that if ancient men could make pointy sticks that they took down elephants (Lehringen), rhinos (Clacton), and horses (Schoeningen) with, then they knew how to do it right. There was a rhino shoulder blade found at Boxgrove, England with a round hole through it, put there by one of those ancient pointy sticks. If it can puch a hole in rhino bone, then it's good enough for me!

It would take at least a few hundred years, up to maybe a thousand or so, for soluble minerals to leach out of surrounding stone and concrete around the object, and a hundred year old hammer that was a few hundred to a thousand years old would still be a bit paradoxical.

Thanks for the clarification Nin! I didn't know that... Maybe I just should have done a little research....

Personally I think this is the true effort behind HAARP, turn on a couple of megawatts to liquefy the rock, set your hammer down,  and you have created an instant artifact. The Smithsonian makes money supporting it's true effort of hiding giants, NASA continues it's deception of ongoing alien collusion, because the public is once again distracted by yet another possibility of Ancient Aliens with Hollywood creating another distracting program. Simple really... 

I love the idea of time travel. It's - well it's just something you know scientists are never going to stop working on - that and immortality. The very powerful in the world so wish to be Gods. Live forever, go back fix mistakes. Have total architectural control over society. I am glad Mother Nature is a bee we really can't control.

There is plenty of time in which a previous civilization could have arose and went extinct on Earth. There is an episode I've seen about how fast it would take the Earth to erase most of our civilization. Do know what the next civilization to arise after our demise will find? What will be embedded in rock and dirt for them to dig up? Our glass wear. Like... ladies bedroom toys, vases, those unicorns, and glass horoscope thingies you can buy as novelty gifts. Graffiti might get uncovered, which is sort of cool, and a lot of stone angels, gnomes, faeries, and other garden ware. What will they think of our civilization?

I wish I had a time traveling machine to find out.

The hammer though, with the clam on it - probably isn't as old as claimed. The links convinced me, and it's suspicious the owner won't allow the handle to be tested. If that rock is barnacles and coral holding the hammer in place against the rock - then it could be only a couple thousand years old or even less.