The Quimbaya artefacts claimed to be OOP /out-of-place artefacts, as some (the so called Quimbaya airplanes) appear to look like modern planes / aircrafts.
These stylized gold items measure between 2 "and 3", with each piece personalized for a unique look. And dozens of other gold objects, made by the Quimbaya civilization, dated to around One Thousand CE.
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| Image credit: The Gypsy Thread |
The Quimbaya civilization inhabited the regions around the valley of the Cauca River on the western slope of the Andes. There is no clear evidence to indicate when Quimbaya came into being, however, most researchers agree it was in the 1st century BC.
They were expert hunters, grew many different and diverse crops, fished, and had many industries including silversmithing and gold mining.
The Quimbaya civilization reached its peak between the 4th and 7th centuries AD. The Spanish conquistadors began to colonize Colombia in 1509, which led to the end of the Quimbaya period.
The Quimbaya artifacts were looted by the Spanish conquistadors in the late 1800s in an area known as the Central Cauca Valley.
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| Quimbaya Golden Helmet. (Image credit: Wikipedia) |
There is also evidence, during the 16th century that the Spaniards sacked several sites along the the Cauca Valley, in search of gold and other valuables.
Due to the Quimbaya artifacts having been looted, there is no archaeological record of all the artifacts that were found, only estimates and what was eventually turned into the President of the Colombian Republic.
The researchers classified the artifacts in question as depictions of birds, insects, butterflies, and lizards common in the area, but some of the objects do not resemble any known living creatures.
In fact, they also look like many of our modern flying machines; some complete with propellers and tail rudders.
According to wikipedia, in 1994, the Germans scientists: Peter Belting and Conrad Lubbers created simplified radio controlled scale models of these objects and proved that their models, lacking some of the twisted features of real action figures, could fly. They successfully demonstrated that the designs fly with both the simple power of the single propeller and the power of the jet.
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