In 1851, in a mine at Meeting House Hill, a group of workers found a strange object with an origin as mysterious as its subsequent disappearance. The Dorchester Pot, so called because it was found in Dorchester (Boston), was embedded inside a stratified rock between 570 and 593 million years old. How is it possible, then, that a stone from the Ediacaran period held a pot that seems to have been made in Victorian times?
The Dorchester Pot was inverted bell-shaped and split in two when found, made of what looked like zinc alloy and carefully worked silver inlaid with botanical motifs that add to the mystery of its origin. The carboniferous plants depicted on it were very similar to some species that disappeared from Earth thousands of years ago. All this would have been reported in Scientific American in June 1852.
The find led followers of creationism (and other alternative theories about the origin of humanity) to believe that this pot was evidence of their beliefs. Michael Cremo, a Vedic creationist also known as Drutakarmā dāsa, said in his book Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race that the Dorchester Pot is evidence of “the presence of metalworking artists in North America more than 600 million years ago.” Some believe it is evidence of an ancient civilization that existed before the alleged global flood.
On the other hand, archaeologists who have studied the origin of the Dorchester Pot believe that it is not such an ancient or mysterious object. Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews of Bad Archaeology points out several inconsistencies in the find: “Firstly, it was found in the rubble, with no evidence that it was ever inside the rock. Why was that assumed? Secondly, it is clearly an evidently Victorian-style object -why would someone from 1852 believe it was more than a few years old?” Fitzpatrick-Matthews accepts that those questions remain unanswered, but they “clearly demonstrate the credulity of those who discovered and reported it.”
Proof of the existence of an ancient civilization or an object purposely placed deep in the substratum? The technology we have today to determine the age and possible origin of an object could be useful to learn more about the Dorchester Pot. However, it is currently missing: shortly after it was found, it disappeared. All that remains of it are the reports of the time and the stories about this “relic from another time.”
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
