By now, most people have probably heard about the so-called “Baghdad battery,” an object that has been claimed by many people to be an ancient Persian galvanic cell, or electric battery. The so-called “battery” consists of a fourteen-centimeter tall ovoid ceramic pot, a copper tube affixed to the aside of the pot with an asphalt seal, and an iron rod affixed to the inside of the copper tube by the same asphalt seal. There was evidence of acidic residue on the inside.
A hypothesis originally proposed in 1940 by the Austrian archaeologist Wilhelm König holds that this object might be an ancient Persian galvanic cell that might have been used for electroplating. This hypothesis, despite having been repeatedly debunked, keeps being repeated by popular science authors.
König’s battery hypothesis also, unfortunately, keeps getting repeated by people who I can only describe as “New Agers” who keep claiming that the so-called “Baghdad battery” is an “out-of-place artifact” or “OOPArt” and that it is evidence that there was a prehistoric civilization with modern levels of technology that we don’t have record of.
In reality, even if the so-called “Baghdad battery” really were a battery, it certainly would not be evidence for the existence of an unbelievably technologically advanced prehistoric civilization. Furthermore, archaeologists actually have a pretty good idea of what the so-called “Baghdad battery” was used for—and it almost certainly wasn’t used as a battery.
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