How a Mysterious 'Ancient' Artifact Turned Out to Be a 1920s Spark Plug"

In February 1961, three adventurous rock enthusiasts were hunting for geodes near Olancha, California, when they stumbled upon something quite unusual. They took their finds home and cut into it, expecting to see the usual mineral formations. Instead, they discovered a cylindrical object inside that looked like it was made of porcelain. Inside this object was a metal shaft surrounded by a hexagonal sheath of copper and some unidentified substance. Their imaginations ran wild with possibilities—was this an artifact from a hyper-advanced ancient civilization like Atlantis, a relic from time travelers, or maybe a gift from extraterrestrial beings?

If any of these theories were true, scientists would have to rewrite human history entirely! But not everyone shared their excitement. Truth-seekers and alternative archaeology circles were abuzz with theories and debates about the so-called Koso artifact until the late '90s. That’s when a group of skeptics took images and x-rays of the discovery to spark plug collectors. Guess what? They identified the artifact as an old spark plug from the 1920s, not ancient technology at all. Nearly 20 years later, one of the co-discoverers took it to the University of Washington for a thorough inspection, which confirmed it was indeed a 1920s Champion spark plug. The stone matrix wasn’t a geode but a concretion formed by natural processes over decades, not millennia.