Thinking Sideways: Baghdad Battery

of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice if you had listened to what we're calling the lost twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've gone back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a little different today than we do in what you're about to listen to. Yeah, enjoy, Bye, great Bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't understand this. I'm not going new. You never know stories of things we simply

don't know the answer too. Hey, welcome, This is Thinking Sideways the podcast. I'm Devin, I'm Steve, I'm Joe, and uh we're going to talk about a mystery. I know it's I love a mystery. The mystery I want to talk about is a mystery artifact mysterious artifact. Mystery. It's

a mystery artifactor, it's also mysterious, also mysterious. Yeah, so let's just get started in nineteen thirty eight, because I can't say it the Bagdad Museum, the German director of the National Museum of Iraq, either unearthed this artifact during an excavation near Baghdad or found it in the basement of the Bagdad Museum. That's kind of what I how I understand it is he just found it laying around the museum care He claims that he found it on an excavation, but it seems like he may have just

found it in the basement. I think he found it in the basement. I'll tell you. I'll tell you why I think so little later on. Right, So, this mysterious artifact is a terra cotta pot that's about five inches tall and the mouth of it is one and a half inches. It contains a copper cylinder made of like a rolled up copper sheet, and it houses a single iron rod isolated from the copper by an asphalt plug

or a stopper. They call it a stopper two and the rod and cylinder fits snugly into the opening of the jar and then and the jar is, as Joe said when we were talking about this earlier, kind of shaped like a hand grenade. It bulges out at the edges. It's not straight up and down or it's not cylindrical. It's not a cylinder. It had bulges, and it's not water tight. So if the jar were filled with liquid, everything would be surrounded, including the rod. Oh, everything goes

into the rod and submerged. Huh. Initially they dated these objects to objects to be about two thousand years old, which would put it in like two hundred and fifty BCE to two hundred and fifty CE. Okay, common era and before common era. So okay, so anybody's wondering, and they're called the bag Dad batteries, well because they're pretty sure they're the first instance of batteries. Weird. So yeah, and so that's what they ran their iPods off of.

I assume, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. No, So they did actually conduct an electrical current, which is kind of interesting. The copper and iron, they form what's called an electrochemical couple, so that if any kind of electrolyte containing liquid were exposed to them, they would make an electric charge, a voltage of some kind. I think they did some experiments so like reconstructing those they got one point one volts out of them. I think, yeah, they actually they reproduced these.

They did a couple of reproductions of these, because obviously you don't test it in like the two thousand year old pots. Yeah, that seems like a yeah. And they filled it with grape juice, which is apparently has a lot of electrolytes in it. Well, yeah, so why not because they thought grape juice. Also, they had grape juice back then, so it'd be a pretty good representation of

something they might have used. And it produced two vaults with the grape juice, which is, you know, not a lot, but it's something, it's some kind of it's a charge of some kind. So, you know, one of the big questions that people have about this is how could ancient Persian science have kind of grasped the ideas of electricity? But I think really the best answer to that is you don't really have to know how something works to know that it works. Oh well, that's how a lot

of things in history have discovered. Is you go, oh, look at that. I have no idea but it totally works every time, it works reliably, So I think that we can just kind of ignore that question in my mind at least. Well, that sort of begs the question. I mean, it could have been, it could have produced electric current, but is what do you do with it? That is exactly yes, yeah, well do you deal with it?

So there are a lot of theories on this. One suggestion was painkilling Greeks from you know again but way before this time, we talk about the pain killing attributes of electrical fish, like electrical eels, et cetera. If they were in pain, they would use those and it would help dull the pain apparently. And that's kind of like when you when you've got you know, if you've ever gone to a chiropractor and you have back problems, they'll put a little electrodes on your back and run a

little current through you to help ease things off. I think it relaxes your muscles. Yeah, if you've got something that's not in tense and that that extra current seems to make it let go and relax and then yeahhard so much. Yeah. Actually, they actually make like portable versions of those two like this, Like old family friend of

my parents years ago. He had serious back issues, I mean really bad, and so he actually had this this little pack that he carried around with him and it was wired into it, you know, and it was back and it was like he could just you know, I just feeling a little pain, you could just turn it up a little bit, you know. And I was like, and I asked him about it. I said, is it like, would you say, kind of addictive? I mean, when you crank that thing, you know, does it really feel awesome?

And he says, yeah, it kind of does. Yeah, But by any way, we're getting way up. But I mean it shows that, you know, electricity does I have that effect in small doses obviously not large doses. But it could also have been used for interrogation, because imagine the intimidation effect if you know, the interrogator said, I will I'll use this back to an hour on one point one vaults. So you're going at I mean that would

be intimidating. Well, I would be intimidating. You know. The thing is is that, like it turns out two vaults is like not a lot. I mean, so everybody's done this experiment right with like a nine vault battery and you like put it on your tongue and it doesn't feel great, But it also isn't that painful, It turns out is not. It's not that much. It's also a function of current, though it's not just I mean, nine holes can hurt you at a high current, but you know, sure,

sure low current. Now you know current like these are producing, it's not really gonna do anything. And they also talk about there's a lot of records of ancient Persians using things like cannabis and opium and wine for pain killers, which are all like way more effective, more powerful than like a two vault little like battery situation. So do you think that they used to really use them for pain or do you think they would just get high?

There are other suggestions that they used this to power something, right, and I think this is one of the more interesting theories because two volts isn't a lot, but two volts is a lot when you've got like twenty of them. But they've only found the one correct, yes, so we don't know if there's been more, if there was a bunch of them put together, okay, okay, so we don't know that, and the other the other well, then the other problem that they have is that they've never just

covered any wires. This is a big problem that scientists have. They say, well, we didn't discover any wires with it. It's like, okay, first of all, where did you discover this one standalone battery, right, because maybe there are a bunch of wires, maybe two. It's been two thousand years. Copper corrodes pretty quickly. I just feel like a thin copper wire isn't gonna make it two thousand years in the ground. Maybe not. But well, and this gets back to what I was referring to you a little bit

earlier about WILLIELM. Kunig and possibly being the person who dug this up. And I don't think it was because apparently the records, generally speaking archaeologists, when they dig something up, they keep very meticulous notes about exactly where everything was found in relationship to everything else. Apparently whoever dug this battery up or whatever this thing is didn't really do that,

so it's more of an amateur thing. Somebody, just some treasure hunter found it, maybe wound up doning it to the museum. And then Phil Helm, who was curator of the museum, just stumbled across it in the basement, in the box somewhere. But yeah, since whoever dug it up didn't really document the site as carefully as he should have, then who knows, maybe there were a few wires were Yeah, maybe maybe there were a few other batteries laying around. Who knows. Ye might not have even recognized him for

what they do. Yeah, maybe he thought they were like trails of centipedes or something. Well maybe, yeah, we know, but you know, that kind of makes the question of like what, you know, they're not charging their iPods right now? Yeah, you know, so what were they maybe trying to charge? And huh. Yeah, somebody tried to claim that they actually used these batteries to power lights. Yeah, actually, this is exactly what I was going to say. But again, no

evidence has been found of anything resembling a light bulb. Well, they have the one evidence, one piece of like kind of shaky evidence they have is this relief, a hieroglyphic relief inside of a pyramid. They call it the Deandra bulb, and it looks it actually looks like a bulb, like a light bulb, like a light bulb, kind of about that, right, Yes, it's the big, the big long cylinder that's in the

same image that will put up. But yeah, I can see that that could be interpreted as a light bulb based on our understanding of them, but we don't have an understanding of what that could have represented culturally or contextually at the time. Well, I can tell you what scientists like, actual scientists, Okay, yes, please, no, they think. So the squiggly line right here in the middle of it, Yeah,

is the nile slash a snake. And then this is a little lotus flower, So it's talking about fertility and like continue. So it's a really different representation than people have ascribed to it. It does look like a light bulb, let's be fair. It does, but no, no, no, I mean, you know, it's a one instance, and it can it can be explained in other ways. It could be a

giant hot dog for all we know. It could be right, So, you know, the thing they talk about with those though, is that, according to some people, you can't actually take a torch, a lit torch into the deepest parts of a pyramid because there's not enough oxygen for the fire to keep going. So the big problem is how did they light the inside of that? If a torch won't

keep burning. True, that's good point. And they've said they've done some experiments where people tried to use like mirrors to light the way, but the light diffuses too quickly for them to actually get it into any kind of depth of significance. So you know, that's kind of the idea behind needing a light bulb. And I guess, yeah, okay, I understand that, But I just don't think this is the only place we've found this specific illustration or relief

of it. You would think that if somebody did this kind of stuff, that idea would have been documented more than one drawing. I agree, yeah, And I think you would have found more, Especially inside of a pyramid, right, if you're excavating a pyramid, there would be these things in the innermost chambers, you would assume, right, you would think, and there'd be wires and stuff like that. You would

you would leave it there. Plus, I mean there there are always to ventilate your pyramid, even back in those days. I mean they were probably were ventilator shafts that probably over the years got filled in and plugged. Probably you know you can you can you can build a ventilator shaft, build a fire underneath it, and it'll center draft up that it will suck out. It'll basically create a nice draft and bring a nice fresh air for you, so your torchies will stay lit. Yeah, you know, so it's

entirely possible. They they probably had something like that going on, I would guess yea. And probably when they're all done and they had it all filled in and you know, perils all put to rest and everything like that, they might have just gone ahead and plugged up the vent hole just for security. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, there are definitely ways to explain away. Or they just you know, ancient aliens and flashlights. Yeah,

they had flashlights, ancient LEDs. Yeah. So another theory is that they use these batteries for electroplating. Oh yeah, I read about this, and yeah, this was a kind of a weird one. To figure out. I had to do a bunch of research on exactly how electroplating works. Yeah, that's really that's kind of a tough one. How would you find out? Well, the way I understand electroplating is that if you've got let's say gold and silver in a substrate, let's just use vinegar, because that's an easy

one for us. All it works relatively well. If I understand how it's working is that it's and correct me if I'm wrong. If you know, if either of you know better, is that it's kind of at the molecular level. It breaks some of the gold on the exterior down that's in the solution, and it's attracted to the piece of silver and then it bonds to that and that process continues so that you're shuttling at a very very

thin level, little bits at a time. So it's not a fast profit, especially in something as small as that is, or if you were using grape juice or whatever it is, because it's the pH isn't that high, and it's it's just what it is. It doesn't do a good job. But electroplating is kind of a it's just such a scientific process we figured out with the eighteen hundreds. I think we've finally got a good beat on how to electroplate things. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly one that we

developed that kind of technology. I know it was in the eighteen hundreds. I mean that certainly to me, is a more believable theory than powering electrical devices like leg bulbs, you know. But yeah, so I you know, I also did a lot of research on electroplating, because it is it's kind of like a weird thing to get your head around. And what I came up with in my research was that while yes, something like this could be potentially used for electroplating, there's no actual evidence of anything

from this time being electroplated. Everything from this time has very visible signs of more conventional ways of you know, plating things, hammering them together. I think that's what they usually do it. They would they'd hammered it into a thin sheet and then hammer the two together in bondom gilt plating. They call it guilt plating or doing mercury guilding, which is basically just like putting, like putting them both in mercury and melting them together without any kind of

electric current or anything like that. Right, sounds a lot more basic than simple and easy. Yeah, they totally are. And you know that's those are the only ways we've ever found anything from this time period. But I did. I did find it funny. One of the articles, and that I don't remember exactly where I found it, was saying that if this thing was used to electroplate gold

onto other objects. So it's a cheaper way of making all of your gold effigies and everything like that, or your gold trinkets that the pharaoh whoever has that there could be all of this supposed pure gold in museums. It's actually electroplated stuff and it's not actually gold. It's silver, copper or whatever that then has the gold on top of Yeah, that would be micron sheet. Yeah, as all of those things are. I don't buy it. Yeah, no, I would have worn off by now, but all at

least in places. But also it'd be quite obvious if something was like say silver, played it with gold, because it wouldn't weigh nearly enough. Yeah. Yeah, because gold's a lot denser. Yeah. Yeah, I thought he stressed about that. I don't think. I don't really accept it. Yeah, I don't buy that one. I'm going to skip the next theory because it's my favorite one and go on to like the more mundane science y boring mcboor bull. So there's two boring mcbors. One is that these jars were

containers to hold papyrus scrolls. Okay, actually I think that that's the most believable. One it is. I mean, it's pretty believable. Yeah, I'm In March of twenty twelve, this Iraq archaeologist named Professor Elizabeth Stone, she's a professor at the stony Brook University, went on the first archael logical expedition in Iraq for twenty years. And she did. She was doing an interview on NPR during which they were taking phone callers and somebody called in and was like, well,

what about the bag dad batteries? Tell us about those, and her response was to say that she didn't know anybody who believed a single archaeologist who believed that they were actually batteries. Okay, So I think that we've we've missed a bit of information that that everybody's going to want to know, which is we were saying that they put grape juice or whatever it is. Now when they found them, they said they had traces of some kind

of acidic code. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, grape juice in them. Right. So the theory is that it was the papyrus that disintegrated and coated the walls, okay, and that it could have been the same kind of residue, you know, it

was the thirties and forties. Okay, so the uh so, obviously whoever whoever excavated this jar was a little careless because they they just popped it, you know, and all this papyrus stuff sort of flaked flaked away now and they went, oh look it's yeah, they just turned the jar outside down and shook it out and put it back together. Yeah, you know, you expect that stuff to be in there. You know, somebody was a little sloppy.

So that's you know, that's the theory. There's another theory that it's a hoax that is just totally flat out

a hoax. Well yeah, so like there's to start with, there's the red flag of the inconsistent stories of how you found it, right, and then there's the problem of age where they say that it was from two hundred and fifty BCE and after a common era, but apparently if you look at the kind of artistic qualities of it, it's more in line with like what happened in two hundred and fifty a CE to like six hundred and fifty CE, which was like style of jar that they

made at that time. So it's like a nine hundred year difference. Yeah, that's a bit of an issue. So those are two really big issues. How did they how did they data the data actually using scientific instrumentation or just by looking at the style of the jar and saying, wow, the people that built this kind of jar with this particular time, Yeah, I think you know, initially he just said, oh,

it's probably from this time. So I remember reading about this, and the way that I understand it is as Devin said, is that the two hundred and fifty CE to eight hundred or whatever side that was all based on the style of the construction of it in the shape and however they quote unquote would have decorated on the outside because it's it's got grooved lines on the outside. I'm almost as if somebody had taken a wire brush. It's not smooth. Now. Granted, when they found it it was outside.

It was really kind of eroded, so nobody knows exactly what it was adorned with. But if I remember correctly, Koonig William is his name, right, Okay, Williem If I remember right, he was dating it to the time frame he had, and I'm pretty sure that he did some kind of analysis that was what was available at the time. You know, they didn't have good radio dating like we have now. Radio dating is the wrong word, what is it?

But I think it was based on something to do with the metal is how he was dating it, which could be two different things if you think about it. Logically, somebody could have taken a chunk of metal that had been worked years and years prior and been sitting around and just repurposed it into this jar, So they could be from separate time frames, or the dating just could just be completely off. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's from I don't think that any it's it's never been released

to be carbon dated. Yeah, so that's the problem. It's problem. Is this thing still around by the way, Yeah, it supposedly in them is anybody? Oh? Is it in the museum? Apparently? I mean it's you know, it's not enough. Who knows. So let's go to my absolute favorite theory about this, because I think that it's probably was a battery of some kind. It had a little bit of electric charge to it, very enough to like kind of you would feel it. There's this guy and he's a metallurgy expert

of ancient Near East for the British Museum. His name is doctor kratick, and he has this theory, which is that like a cluster of these batteries connected behind some kind of metal statue or idol could have been connected to the idol as a sort of temple trick. So you go, so you go, like and you're it's like a proof of religion sort of situation, a proof well, I'm not a proof of faith, a proof of religion. Right.

So an unbeliever comes to a synagogue or a church or whatever and says, okay, prove to me that your God exists. And the preacher says, okay, if you answer this question correctly, when you touch the statue, it will shock you, and if you answer wrongly, it will not shock you. And they are like standing right next to it. Right, things like this are not common at this time, right, so they're not going to be suspicious of somebody standing

next to this statue. So they say okay, and they answer the question correctly, and everything remains connected, and they touch the statue and it shocks them, or they answer incorrectly, and the priest just goes boop and like moves the one little connector right, what's the switch essentially right, And they touch it and it doesn't shock them. Humm, I like it. I like it. I like it a lot. You know, maybe there would maybe be a mysterious kind of blue flash of like static electricity of some sort.

Oh yeah, that's a great point because at that time those static electricity exists and everybody will have seen it from time to time. You don't know what causes it. Yeah, nobody says, oh, it's static electricity. You have no idea what it is. And there's probably some local folklore name to it. So it's God. God is the you know, this particular God has reached out and created this reaction. That that's a good one. Yeah. So you know, it could have been that it could have just been like

a magician could have been using it. A lot of people made their living kind of traveling around performing miracles and some magic and stuff like that, kind of a carpet baggers. Yeah. So you know, if you could just say, oh, if you touch this magical idol of God, you will get shocked, and nobody would have known what that was all about. You know, it could actually have been for just a sort of a gag thing too, like like a joy buzzer, you know those old things you wear

in your hands, you know, shock people. Yeah, there's no reason somebody couldn't have you know, some ancient king, maybe I couldn't have said you like it had his courtiers behind, I know, without like twenty of these jars all wired and serious that they're carrying. And he's got the wires running down his sleeve through his hand and he goes to shake your hand and you get zapped, and he has a good checkle at your expense. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, this is a time when a lot of

miracles and mysterious things are being recorded. A lot of mythos happen, a lot of mythos happened that in this time, and people were just fanatic for proving that they were telling the truth. And I think that people would go to kind of any lengths to prove that they were telling the truth. And you know, having this little kind of kind of carpet trick. It's a tiny little battery, super easy to be concealed, but you don't need that

many of them. Two volts is enough. You touch something that's metal and you're not expecting any kind of electrical current. You feel a slight tingling of your hand and other people are doing it, are feeling the same thing. That's enough, you know, for a lot of people in a time like this, that's enough. Well, and it's not something you're used to. Well, you don't expect it. You don't know

what's going to happen. And here's the one thing that I find so funny about there's Okay, I don't ascribe to it being a battery per se, and I but I don't really know what this thing is for. This is one of those you know, A can mean this gonna be that it's just so long, there's so little data on it. But what I find so funny is that everybody just flocks to if it was a battery, where are the wires. There's no holes coming out of the top of it for the wires and the you know,

they sealed it with bitchumen, which is basically asphalt. Yeah, yeah, it's naturally occurring asphalt, so it seals it. So it's got to have the wires to make the connection. Well there's there's no there's no holes for the connection. Okay, Well it's found outside. And what does asphalt do when it sits in the sun, It gets hot and it

melts and it did starts. So if some yo yo came along and found this and yank the wires out to use them in something else and then toss it on the ground, it sits in the sun for a couple of years, the holes where the wires were at are going to seal themselves up just from expansion and contraction.

The thing that I actually saw was a theory that they had just like wrapped a little bit of copper around in between where the copper and the asphalt were, so that it would connect to the inside where the sat or where the electricity would be, and then you just put like two little wires on the outside, and then the copper would have you know, disintegrated or whatever. Yeah, over time. But I think, you know, there are a

lot of ways to explain the well, the wires. That's the one thing that I laugh at, as you know, I said, well, somebody took the wire. What nobody seems to consider. And I'm not saying I'm the expert on this and that I've got the perfect theory, but it just seems odd to me that nobody says, well, I wonder if anybody messed with this thing and gutted it for the stuff that they wanted, because, as we've talked

about on other shows, that's common. Yeah, you take materials that are existing and you use them on something else, which means that it could have had something on the outside, a wire on the inside, who knows what it is, and some guy could have, oh, you know, I could totally use this yank, toss it back in the sand

and walk away. Yeah. Really, the other thing I think is that's possible is that somebody could have just been, like, you know, a scientist inventor type, just experimenting around and finds this thing that generates a little bit of electricity and then just thought it over and thought, well, you know, what kind of possibly use this for. It's kind of a neat parlor trick, I guess, but really, you know,

it's not useful. So he just like sort of chunked on the junk pile in the backyard, and one about it is one about went on to the invent the shovel or something else instead, you know. I mean, so it's like it's entirely possible that somebody was experimenting around trying to create electricity, but they just had no application for it. Yeah, and so it just went on the junkie. It's like, Wow, cool idea, but you know, kind of very possible. Yeah, I think I think it's the religious

or parlor trick situation. I think that's a cool idea. I just without having more of them, I can't follow that. That's fair. Yeah, what's your what do you think? Really? The thing is that this one has got so much conflicting you don't know. I just I'm hesitant to lean towards one because there's just too many gaps. Just pulling the skeptic card, I am man. What do you think Aliens? Of course, Santa Claus. I think I'm still leaning kind of towards the papyrus. The scroll. Yeah, the pirate scroll.

I think that's a compelling explanation for it. I think so too. If you have theories, if you want to let us know hand grenade, No, it's not a hand grenade, send us an email. Email address is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Check out our website. We're gonna post some links, some pictures. You can listen to the show there, or you can, you know, click a little link and email us directly from the site. That website is Thinking Sideways Podcast. Dot com. You can listen to

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