These golden sculptures are pre-Columbian. It is difficult to determine their exact age as gold is hard to date. However it is strongly believed that they date from around 500 - 800 CE. They have been found in central and also coastal regions of South America. When first found they were thought to be zoomorphic (representing animals). Well, looking at those images I can't come up with one animal looking like these artifacts below. Is it a bird, is it a plane...well it certainly looks like it from where I stand.
And why not? It is easy to dismiss these finds as the creation of complete morons who only serve their gods without knowing what they are actually doing. It has wings, it has a stabilising tail, it has some kind of landing gear, what else do you need? Lets face it even if this model of an aircraft came with a signed letter stating that these are flying machines, orthodox science would still doubt it. Well, some have said that the object in the top picture isn't very aerodynamic as there is a very large semi disk in the way where we would imagine the cockpit to be. True but then again some people have come up with another ingenious explanation.
See how the "nose" of this device is retractable? For landing you have it forward, for flying you put it underneath. I like this idea a lot. Also considering the ornaments on both wings, it was mentioned that in Amerindian culture spirals were representing "ascend" and "descent". Unless it was just a very naive but artistically gifted ancient Indian that thought to himself : "Hmm, those triangles on my stylised bird look a little boring...oh I know, I'll put some spirals on there just for fun." As I keep saying, "Give our ancestors some credit."
This surreal model of a bird has been dated to 200 BC and wad discovered in 1898 in a tomb at Saqqara, Eqypt. Not knowing much about aeroplanes in those days it was put away in a box in an Egyptian Museum and rediscovered by a Dr. Khalil Messiha. This model has undergone far more tests as the above as you can make several models like it without using the original. So what did these tests come up with? They revealed that it seems to have the proportions of a push glider which can take heavy loads at very low speed but there was a catch; it seemed the device was still in development as it was not quite perfect yet. However to even design a model to be near perfect takes a lot of aerodynamic knowledge. Something that was lacking quite profoundly at the beginning of our own aerodynamic history. To me the Egyptian model has far more finesse than even the Wright brothers whimsical first flying machine.
Yes of course those models could be birds or fish or flying rats. It seems that if it doesn't fit into our modern view of history it gets molded until it fits, hence the bird analogies.
