Batteries found from the bronze age.

I have heard of ancient batteries found from the bronze age does any one know anything about this, if it is 100% true or any false claimes to it ?

[edit on 6-7-2004 by John bull 1]

You can start here...

Could you expound on where you heard this and what you think of it?

Buried With king tut himself was the nessery things to make something that had stored electricty.(aka battery) also there were blue prints (drawings) of a craft that once sciencest made it was a glyder .
Looked very much like a giant bird and the battery was a clay vase with a acid based liquid and copper and another metal in it.
( National geographic)or nova i forget wich.

Ancient Battery

Here's a site it is true there was a battery found near Baghdad this is like the thousanth time hearing this it is quite intersting though electricity could have been used a lot earlier than we thought.

I found this site interesting. It talks about depictions in Egyptian glyphs at dendera which. to anyone who isn't thinking about ancient egypt, look an awful lot like a pair of large batteries wired to some sort of coil.
The site also discusses the use of the pottery batteries for electroplating of precious metals.
I suggest that this be taken with a grain of salt until further corroboration is found. Internet sources are tricky when it comes to the question of who to trust.

paranormal.about.com...://enigmas.org/aef/lib/archeo/nf%2Delectric.shtml

The Bagdad Battery

That article should meet part of your needs.

[edit on 23-6-2004 by Raphael_UO]

This also has alot of similarities with a Leyden Jar (early capacitor) which doesn't need a liquid medium , or a chemichal reaction to seperate charges .

Give someone quite a ZAP if they were hooked together .

[edit on 23-6-2004 by oddtodd]

Argh, and PTOOOEY on the Egyptian part!!!

Yes, it's what the achaeologists say it is. No, it's not what that fruitcake writing the website says it is. It's nice of him to sneer at archaeologists who can read the writing and then come up with his own interpretation... based on his not knowing how to read ANY of the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

If the little darling took the time to learn to read Egyptian hieroglyphics (I did), he'd find out that the hieroglyphs next to the objects (that he so casually dismisses and photoshops out) actually mention what the things are (snake stones and pillars.)

Big panels like that are cartoons. Think of a political cartoon in the newspaper -- they're something like that, and they illustrate main events in a life. Just as this political cartoon: news.yahoo.com.../040618/cx_schorr_umedia/20041806&e=1 has a caption, so to did the ancient Egyptian panels.

Notice, that no matter how you might want to tweak the "meaning" of the political cartoon, it makes no sense to say "See, that triangle thing over Bush's head proves that he's a Pythagorean alien who brought to us the quadrant square!" -- it makes no sense to ignore what's actually written on the Egyptian panels and say "oh no! That's not snake stones and so forth! Archaeologists are stupid! It's BATTERIES!"

(le sigh)

Somebody needs to whap that dude over the head with a few books on how to read Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Setting aside the ridiculous (i'm taking your word for it) interpretation of those heiroglyphs, what do you think about the batteries that have been found? Would you happen to have any insight, owing you your education, as to how widely this might have been known of, produced, and used, and what for?

If the claim that they were soldering and using electroplating is true, it reveals a missed aspect of ancient craftsmanship which could have been an important part of trade (and therefore the power of whichever civilization actually discovered these things). Also, it raises the question of exactly how far ahead of the traditional timeline chemistry and metalurgy really were. (Although, considering the mystical interpretation some cultures afforded to medicine and chemistry, and the illustration of how relatively little the Chinese did with gun powder, it has to be stressed that this probably isn't a huge revelation. Just a minor marvel and a credit to ancient civilizations.) On the other hand... my earliest posts have already made it pretty clear that I'm open to more wild explanations. I'm jsut being cautious about the theories I get behind now, so that if I'm ever right I will be heard. Like Daly used to say... Back no losers, make no waves. That philosophy kept him in power for decades.

No batteries existed during the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age began approximately at the time of Moses.

We have a lot of written information from that time, and nothing was ever said anywhere about batteries. Remember electricity wasn't discovered until Ben Franklin's kite experiment.

Interestingly, though, The Bronze Age (3,000 years ago) was the time of history's most dramatic event, witnessed by a nation of thousands. Click here to read of the fire, thunder and perhaps a vehicle from somewhere other than earth: onealclan0.tripod.com...

It was likely used for electroplating. Does that mean the ancients had an understanding of chemistry or electricity? Or did they just find an isolated phenomenon? Who knows.


2012 if the phenomenon behind the electroplating technique wasn't well understood, or widely spread, there's no reason why it should have been recorded or its knowledge continued until the present day.

One only needs to look at the Australian Aborigines that were native to Tasmania to see that knowledge can be lost. Unlike their mainland cousins, they had lost many skills such as for example the making of clothing. Does that mean their ancestors didn't wear clothes? We know they did.

As for historical accounts, they're only as good as the papyrus they're written one I'm sure you've heard of the discovery of some of the most early dated New Testament manuscripts which had been serving as fuel for the fire for the monks of a monastery until their discovery.

What makes you think everything that has beeen ever written is known about or has survived till this day? If that were the case, we wouldn't have needed Archeology to again learn of the Hittites a century ago.

[edit on 27-6-2004 by hetman]

I'm ...skeptical. For instance, here in the BBC account of the Baghdad batteries (with photos, thankfully, of the real artifact) they admit that nobody knows where they come from: news.bbc.co.uk...
An artifact without provenance is always suspect. I would believe that perhaps an ancient Leonardo da Vinci created them, but whoever he or she was, they didn't transmit the discovery.

So, while it was a local discovery, it never became widely used. Batteries were introduced in modern civilizations about 1800, but they had been used by scientists for centuries before that.


Excellent points... but as far as I know, if there are examples of this, it's only one or two. As far as I know, the soldering that was done was done in a fire and not by electrical means. I haven't yet seen convincing evidence about electroplating -- but, admittedly, I tend to be a bit biased about the websites I've seen on this which tend to be of the hysterical "SCIENTISTS ARE HIDING EVIDENCES!!!!!" type.

On the other hand, I'm seeing some things that convince me that Greeks did use electric eels for pain relief (holy coincidence, Batman... I'm buying some TENS units for the same thing!)



In fits and starts, apparently (g) It would see as though genius was seldom copied or appreicated.



My hat's off to you... you make some excellent points and I confess to having sort of a knee-jerk skepticism without fuller examination of the site, based on the incorrect ravings about the Egyptian item.

At this point (thanks for pointing these things out), I'll admit to being a mildly skeptical about the Baghdad batteries (simply because they just "showed up") but am willing to admit that a genius of Leonardo da Vinci's caliber or Archimedes' caliber was doing research and development at that time.

It's kind of a shame that this person apparently wasn't an active scribe or better known.

My personal beliefs as well...it wasn't widely used enough to say without a doubt it was for electroplating, but if I remember right...some of the oldest items found to be electroplated were in the same area... There was a whole documentary on this on one of the learning channels a few years back...all about the battery...wish I could remember the name....