An Oopart (Out Of Place ARTifact) is a term applied to dozens of prehistoric objects found in various places around the world that, given their level of technology, are completely at odds with their determined age based on physical, chemical, and/or geological evidence. Ooparts often are frustrating to conventional scientists and a delight to adventurous investigators and individuals interested in alternative scientific theories.
In 1974, just over a mile from the city of Aiud in Romania, a group of workers were carrying out an excavation job on the banks of the Mures River. While digging, they stumbled upon some fossils—along with a mysterious metal artifact.
In addition to the fossilized Mastodon bones found in the excavation, workers uncovered an aluminum wedge-shaped block lodged under a 35-foot layer of sand. This wedge-shaped metal block appears to have been manufactured, as it did not resemble an animal bone or a geological feature.
The strange block was donated to the Museum of History of Transylvania, but despite such an unusual find, an in-depth investigation of the object would not happen for another 20 years. That’s when editors from a Romanian UFO magazine found the artifact in a museum storeroom in 1995. The metal wedge weighed in at about 5 pounds and measured approximately 8.25 x 5 x 2.75 inches.
The artifact was chemically analyzed in two laboratories to determine its composition—one laboratory was at the Archeological Institute of Cluj-Napoca and another in Lausanne, Switzerland. Both facilities came to similar conclusions: The object was determined to be composed mainly of aluminum (89 percent) along with 11 other minor metals in specific proportions.
Scientists were more than a little shocked since aluminum in its pure state cannot be found in nature, and the technology needed to create something of such a pure grade has only been available to mankind since the middle of the 19th century.
A thin, exterior layer of oxidation that evenly covered the aluminum block helped date the object to around 400 years old. However, the geological stratum in which it was found suggests that it already existed for some 20,000 years before—during the Pleistocene Era.
Due to its chemical composition and decidedly manufactured shape, several hypotheses regarding the true origin have emerged. While some scientists believe it may very well be part of a manmade tool (no actual tool has been specified), other scientists suggest that the aluminum relic may have served as a component for an ancient space craft.
An aeronautical engineer examining the object compared the Aiud block to a support point for a smaller version of a space exploration module, such as a lunar module, or the leg of the Viking probe. According to this hypothesis, the object, as a part of an extra-terrestrial spacecraft, may have landed in the river after a forceful landing.
So what is the true origin of the Aiud block? Was it merely a tool segment manufactured by an ancient civilization that had managed to produce aluminum of considerable purity hundreds or even thousands of years earlier than the rest of mankind? Or does it belong, as some believe, to an ancient spacecraft? And was this craft designed by man, or does it have an alien origin?
Either way, both the analysis of its oxidized exterior and the geological stratum in which it was found fail to adequately explain how something of such an advanced technology could have existed in such a remote age.
