Out of Place Artifacts
An Out of Place Artifact or ‘OOPArt’, is a term used to describe any object of historical, archaeological or paleontological interest found in a seemingly impossible, out of place or time context. Most objects thought to have been OOPArts have been revealed as either hoaxes or objects with reasonable explanations. The best and thus far only validated example of an OOPArt is the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient, analog computer designed to calculate astronomical positions thought to have been used by the Ancient Greeks. The construction of the Mechanism has been dated to the 1st Century B.C. despite mechanical instruments of similar construction would not be created for another 15 centuries.