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| 300 Million Years old Bell with Garuda |
This bell was found in 1944 by a ten-year-old boy called Newton Richard Anderson who dropped a lump of coal and found it inside. Mr. Anderson kept the bell until 2007 when passed it to Genesis Park.
At this time he underwent polygraph tests to determine if he was telling the truth about the discovery of the bell and the result of this was that “no deception was detected”.
The bell is made of brass (an alloy of copper and zinc) with traces of tin, arsenic, iodine, and selenium.
It is about 7 inches tall and is mounted with a crudely described figure appearing to have one visible leg, two arms, and ahead. This figure is of Garuda (the gigantic bird which carries Lord Vishnu), with its eagle wings spread and a sharp beak.
This bell was made from a method not used today.
When an analysis was carried out it was discovered that the bell was made from an unusual mix of metals, different from any known modern alloy production (including copper, zinc, tin, arsenic, iodine, and selenium).
The seam from whence this lump of coal was mined is estimated to be 300,000,000 years old!
It is customary for Indians to use such bells with either Hanuman or Garuda idol with hands folded in the shape of ‘namasthe‘ on top of them, in festivals, religious celebrations, and marriages.
It is currently accepted by science and geology that coal is a by-product of decaying vegetation. The vegetation becomes buried over time and is covered with sediment. That sediment eventually fossilises and becomes rock. This natural process of coal formation takes up to 400 million years to accomplish.
Anything that is found in lumps of coal or in coal seams during mining, had to have been placed or dropped into the vegetation before it was buried in sediment. Eventually the “bell found in coal” became somewhat famous, being featured in creationist and apologetics books. An evangelistic tract was made that presented the bell as indisputable proof of the worldwide deluge.
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| 300 Million Years old Bell with Garuda |
Ripley’s “Believe it or Not” found out about the bell and sent a representative to investigate.
Anderson was interviewed and the bell was prominently featured in the 1992 CBS docudrama production called Ancient Secrets of the Bible.
Creationist books and articles continue to describe this mysterious bell, touting it as a genuine antediluvian artifact (see for example Morris, 2008). The bell was even displayed at the San Diego Museum of Natural History for a couple of years, and they made an offer to purchase it.
In the 1963–1964 timeframe, a man named Boris Bilas took the bell to the geology department at the University of Delaware at Wilmington, where it was studied and then returned. They confirmed that the bell was handmade. The clapper inside the bell is composed of iron and it still rings beautifully.
