In 1944, as a ten year old boy, Newton Anderson was fueling the coal furnace in his parent’s home. He dropped a lump of coal onto the basement floor, and it broke in half, revealing that it contained this bell inside. The bituminous coal that was mined near his house in Upshur County, West Virginia, is supposed to be about 300 million years old!
What is a brass bell with an iron clapper doing in coal ascribed to the Carboniferous Period? According to Norm Sharbaugh’s book Ammunition (which includes several “coal anecdotes”) the bell is an antediluvian artefact (made before the Genesis Flood). The Institute for Creation Research had the bell submitted to the lab at the University of Oklahoma. There, a nuclear activation analysis revealed that the bell contains an unusual mix of metals, different from any known modern alloy production (including copper, zinc, tin, arsenic, iodine, and selenium).
Genesis 4:22 states that Tubal-Cain was an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. Perhaps when his civilization came to an end in the flood, one of his bells was buried with a mass of vegetation that became coal and ended up thousands of years later in Newt Anderson’s coal bin. The bell was prominently featured in the 1992 CBS docudrama production called Ancient Secrets of the Bible and is now part of the Genesis Park collection.
Later on, Newton Anderson spent a great deal of time researching the figure atop the bell. He discovered similarities to the Babylonian Southwest Wind Demon, called Pazuzu. The demon is typically shown with a prominent headpiece like the bell figure. Indeed, the bell’s headpiece clearly is broken off, signifying that it may have been quite a bit taller. The Hindu deity Garuda is sometimes depicted on top of bells, as is the Egyptian Isis.
The kneeling posture with hands clasped is quite like Garuda representations. Because of this, some have argued that it must be an Indian Ghanta Bell. But ancient religious worship seems to take on similar forms in various cultures (like the Venus figurines from disparate lost cultures and the ancient fascination with pyramids), which doesn’t necessitate that they were culturally related. At our request, Mr. Anderson was examined by an expert polygraph specialist (who works with death row inmates) to further validate his claims. He passed the test, and the report can be seen here.
In 2011, Genesis Park staff participated in locating the mine where the coal containing the bell artefact was dug. An updated article has been published on the significance of this find.
During its dramatic 4.6 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes.
We humans have only been around for a tiny fraction of the Earth's 4.6-billion-year history, and we still don't know every detail of Earth. We still don't know a lot about what is right underneath our feet, we don't know much about Earth's first 1.5 billion years, and we don't know why the universe exists.
Here is the timeline of our Earth, the place we call home. There's been many, many changes that have gone on in this time period? Some stuff will never, ever be revealed, and some stuff shall never be unearthed, not that they don't exist just that nobody will ever find, discover, or uncover it? Who knows what that could be from treasure to the proof of ancient advanced civilisations? Earth has and will always have many mysteries about it? It's just that old that there will always be stuff being unearthed, literally.
This is how old the Earth is, and anything could have happened in these time periods?
Other sources:
4.6 billion years ago - The origin of the Earth
3.8 billion years ago - First life arises
2.1 billion years ago - Eukaryotes evolved
1.1 billion years ago - First sexually reproducing organisms
570 million years ago - First arthropods evolve
530 million years ago - The first fish
475 million years ago - First land plants
385 million years ago - First forests
370 million years ago - The first amphibians
320 million years ago - The earliest reptiles
225 million years ago - The dinosaurs evolved
200 million years ago - The mammals evolved
150 million years ago - First birds
130 million years ago - Flowering plants evolve
100 million years ago - The first bees evolve
65 million years ago - Dinosaurs and ammonites become extinct
14 million years ago - The first great apes appear
2.5 million years ago , Genus Homo evolved
200 thousand years ago - Our species, Homo sapiens, evolves
10 thousand years ago - End of the last Ice Age
What a beautiful thing that humans are able to even put a timeline to the place we call home? That in itself is a really big achievement, and that means we are capable of dating objects, and so I ask the question, is the bell found in the piece of coal actually from 300 million years ago? Between the dinosaurs evolving and the earliest reptiles coming on to the Earth? Who knows who or what was here back then besides the indigenous species, could there really have been an advanced thinking civilization of metal working beings?
I suppose we might just never know or until another one turns up with a few more bread crumbs of evidence for us to work with?
