In June 1936, workmen near Baghdad uncovered an ancient tomb that contained a clay jar containing a copper tube enclosed at one end, an iron rid and some crumbling bitumen (asphalt). Intrigued by the discovery (know in the Iraq Museum), physicis Walter Winton of the Science Museum in London examined the jar and was impressed “Put some acid in the copper vessel, any vinegar will do… and you have a simple cell which would generate voltage and give a current”. His only doubts were due to the fact it seemed to be unique, an archeological “one off”, though he was unaware other jars like this had been discovered at Cresiphon. No clues were given to the jars use. Topping up he jar with vinegar or wine produces half a volt for about eighteen days.
Why would the ancients need electricity? Paul Keyser has suggested that Babylonians used electric fish as a local anaestheic. More plausibly, William Konig (director of the Iraq museum) feels that similar techniques are still used by Iraqi craftsmen as a low-tech form of electroplating and to make coloured glass. These trade secrets would obviously be guarded jealously if they existed.
Cites:
W. Winton, Baghdad Battery, Sumer 18 (1962) 87-89.
P.T. Keyser, The Purpose of PArthian Galvanic Cells, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 (1993) 81-98.
In Ancient Inventions, Peter James and Nick Thorpe.
Is this plausible or a crock? Why would ancients need electricity if they had it?
Sounds plausible, though 1/2 volt isn’t much. Perhaps they linked them in series. Electroplating was discovered in modern times as one of the first things somebody did with Volta’s pile (1800), which generated current via the same principal.
Volta’s experiment can be duplicated with some disks of differing metals (pennies and dimes will do), some paper towels and some lemon juice, a suitable demonstration for elementary science classes. Nothing there ancient cultures couldn’t have constructed.
Note that much practical application of electricity had to await further developments which would have been difficult for a pre-industrial culture to duplicate, so it seems plausible they could have come up with crude batteries which remained mostly curiosities with limited application.
If the ancients electroplated though, I would think we should be able to find some clearly plated artifacts.
Probably for the first suggestion, since they often used fish for anesthetic a more permanent version would be very useful. BTW, there have also been batteries found in Egypt.
Wasn’t there speculation that the batteries powered some primitive lighting device that allowed them to build in the Pyramids without torches? Some giant bulb type thing? I remember seeing one on the history channel, it was angled at about 45*, about a foot and a half tall, and two feet long, on a rock pedestal.
I have seen several articles about batteries but they seem to have started when Eric von Daniken conclusively announced that an object discovered in Sout America could be nothing else except a battery.
The accompanying photograph revealed an object, of fairly regular dimensions, that looked a lot more like a lump of stone that had been eroded somewhat with a few scratches in it. The object was slightly shiny, but then many rocks are, I could see no obvious terminals either, nor was the object either hollow or had any filling points, it was cracked and I think that there would have been some evidence of chemical leakage.
Of course since this was supposed to be a battery that had been used by a species that had since left the earth it must obviously have had a technology with which we(or von Danikan himself) are completely unfamiliar, so much so that it could be anything at all couldn’t it?
Since then the language of the some of the great South American civilisations has been decoded and what was authoratatively reported by von Danikan as space helmets and astronauts in spacecraft turns out to be rather differant.
People have used chemistry for centuries for dying, and curing leather,etching glass it wouldn’t be too surprising that the result of some of their methods would indeed end up involving electro-chemical reactions but as to using electricity as a source of energy, well if there were true batteries were are the artifacts that they operated with them ?