Every now and then, a major discovery changes the way humanity looks at its own history and that of the life that came before it. But sometimes, people will find that some fascinating discoveries only seem world-changing but actually have a fairly simple explanation.
However, that doesn't always mean that they'll be willing to recognize it as such. And that's how the mystery of the London Hammer has persisted long after it's been solved.
A scenic walk through Texas
According to Paleo — a website administered by independent dinosaur investigator Glen Kuban — the saga of the London Hammer began when a man named Max Hahn was talking with his wife along Red Creek.
Since it's not the only waterway by that name in the United States, it's worth noting that it's near London, Texas.
Something stood out
It's unclear whether their journey took place in 1934 or 1936, but what is known is that it ended with them examining a small rock formation in the ground.
As for why they found it so interesting, a piece of wood appeared to be sticking out of it, and it didn't look naturally occurring.
A long wait for a little help
For the next ten years, that wooden stick would keep sticking out of the rock nodule. But it was clear that the find had been on Hahn's mind throughout that time.
Because at some point between 1946 and 1947, Hahn's son George broke open the rock formation to finally learn what was resting inside of it.
A hammer that inspired decade of debate
The piece of wood turned out to be the handle for an old hammer that was remarkably intact upon discovery.
However, the most remarkable part of the hammer was how new the metal hammer head looked in comparison to the rock layer it was found in. The level of technology appeared far too advanced for what would have been some seriously early humans.
A mystery forms
Although questions abounded about how the hammer ended up in that rock and whether it was truly as new as it seemed, the mystery largely laid dormant for several decades.
But in the early 1980s, that mystery started to become a matter of long-lasting debate as the hammer took on the name "the London Artifact."
Some important considerations
And since certain details about the hammer will matter a great deal to that debate, it's best to settle them first.
One aspect that multiple examiners on both sides of the debate could agree on was that the hammer was sitting relatively loosely in the rock and was not part of its original formation.
How can people tell how the hammer sat?
With no photos or official documentation taken at the time of the discovery, it's hard to know exactly what the hammer looked like when it was discovered.
However, as Kuban noted, "The lack of sharp marks on the nodule seems to confirm the reports that it was found loose and not chiseled from a larger rock."
It's a little rusty
Paleo reported that the hammer was supposedly smooth with a brownish coating upon discovery.
But in the time since it's been revealed to the world and oxidized, the hammer's head has taken on a rougher texture, and it has since become somewhat rusty. But of course, it's not just the head that has since been closely examined.
A particularly odd fact about the handle
Most wooden artifacts from previous geological periods would be either outright petrified or show some evidence of mineralization, a process by which inorganic minerals find their way into the porous parts of organic material like wood.
But aside from some minor carbon integration at either tip of the handle, the wood in it has remained largely unmineralized.
Enter Carl Baugh
These details are important because each of them is needed to test the veracity of claims made by Creation Evidence museum owner Carl E. Baugh, who acquired the hammer around 1983.
For his part, Kuban was able to examine the hammer twice personally. One of these opportunities came at a 1986 creation conference in Pennsylvania, and the other came in 2006 following a talk Baugh gave at his museum.
An alleged wrench in the works
For Baugh, the London Hammer is a profoundly important find because he often presents it as evidence of an out-of-place artifact.
Since the standard geological timeline puts the Earth as far older than he perceives it and humanity as younger than the world at large by billions of years, anything that could potentially undermine belief in that timeline becomes a valuable resource for him.
A more specific claim
But while other claims — reproduced in a 2014 article in The American Biology Teacher — Baugh has made are in line with the notion that humanity and dinosaurs lived concurrently, he has a more specific origin in mind for the London Hammer.
As Kuban put it, "Baugh considers the hammer to be a 'pre-Flood' relic-- presumably at least a few thousand years old."
They can't seem to get the timeline straight
For Baugh and similarly-inclined Creationists (it's worth noting that some Creationists are not similarly inclined), the rock surrounding the hammer could either be 500 million years old, 400 million years old, 300 million years old, or 135 million years old.
Indeed, Baugh's own website was inconsistent on whether the rock came from the Ordovician period or the Cretaceous period, which are about 300 million years apart.
Getting a straight answer
But since it's not hard to reach the area where the hammer was discovered, geologists were able to determine how old the rock is with much more precision than Baugh or his peers.
And according to Paleo, what they found out was that the rock stratum the hammer was found in is from the Lower Cretaceous period, which makes it between 110 and 115 million years old.
What are the Paluxy "man tracks?"
Although Baugh apparently found it difficult to keep the geologic record straight, Paleo noted that the stratum the hammer was found in is just beneath the one containing what Baugh often calls the Paluxy "man tracks."
For those unfamiliar with this, the 2014 article in The American Biology Teacher described them as footprints close to a particularly well-preserved set of dinosaur tracks that Baugh presents as proof that humans and dinosaurs once shared the Earth.
The problem with Baugh's claims
According to Paleo, Baugh is suggesting that the same humans who made this hammer before the Biblical flood were the same or at least related to the ones who supposedly walked among the dinosaurs.
However, not only has the archaeological evidence at the Palusky River not indicated the presence of genuine human tracks, but the stratum they appear in could be up to 5 million years younger than the layer the hammer was found in.
How carbon dating can help
Kuban noted in Paleo that since the hammer has a wooden handle, its age can be identified with carbon 14 dating.
After all, a lack of usable carbon in the handle would imply the hammer is over 50,000 years old. And if there is carbon 14 in it and it's younger than that, its actual age could be more precisely determined.
Baugh isn't letting any scientists see it
But while that could conclusively solve the mystery, Baugh keeps the hammer under close watch and does not make it available for scientists to analyze closely.
And Baugh has also consistently refused to have the hammer carbon dated. In an exchange of letters obtained by Paleo, Baugh's fellow traveler Walter Brown argued this is only because nobody would agree to Baugh's "understandable conditions" for having it dated.
Baugh's conditions and the reaction
As reproduced by Paleo, Baugh's conditions were that the dating would need to involve a mass spectrometer like the one pictured here, he would need to be present for the dating, and someone else would have to pay for it.
However, Jim Lippard — the person Brown was corresponding with — countered that only one condition here was unreasonable. The mass spectrometry and Baugh's presence were not problems, but Lippard said Baugh had no right to expect others to pay to back up his own claims for him.
Baugh's continued refusals
But whether he had a right to ask for that or not, others did offer to cover the costs and finally determine the age of the London Hammer. However, Baugh still declined.
This led another researcher named R.P.J. Day to write a letter in 1991, which said, "Far from being 'understandable,' Baugh's stipulations seem to be little short of evasive tactics... If four years have gone by and nothing has happened, I think it is safe to conclude that Baugh has no interest whatsoever in determining the truth about his marvelous hammer."
A dubious update
In the late '90s, a Baugh supporter named David Lines claimed that Baugh had had C14 dating done on the hammer and found that its age range was sometime between the then-present and 700 years ago.
Lines explained the fact that even this unusually wide range was far newer than Baugh's insisted age for the hammer was evidence of the unreliability of C14 dating and the hammer's contamination by "current organic substances."
Untangling Baugh's claims
However, this assessment didn't line up with how carbon dating typically works. For one thing, scientists using C14 dating typically report a specific date with a plus or minus margin for error rather than an unhelpfully large range of years. And most C14 labs have methods to minimize interference from modern carbon.
These facts — coupled with the lack of details regarding where, when, or how many times these supposed carbon dating tests took place — make it hard to believe Baugh subjected the hammer to carbon dating at all.
Not even other Creationists agree
In addition to the conventional scientific community, Baugh's claims have also failed to convince other Creationist organizations. He claims the hammer was embedded in the rock when even his ally David Lines acknowledged it was sitting loose within it. He also claimed the handle was petrified, which Paleo noted was refuted by multiple Creationists who examined it.
Finally, Baugh's claims about the unreliability of carbon dating are fringe even in Creationist circles, as many of them consider it reasonably accurate for at least up to several thousand years.
The burden of proof
To effectively demonstrate the London Hammer as the out-of-place artifact Baugh claims it is, Paleo noted that he would need convincing documentation to demonstrate it was once naturally embedded in an ancient rock formation and determine its age with independent scientific evidence.
Since he hasn't even convinced all of his friends of the first condition, and even his dubious claim of carbon dating falls short of the second condition, Baugh seems unprepared to meet this burden of proof.
So what is the London Hammer?
Although Baugh has complicated any efforts to reveal the hammer's true age, the technology and technique visible in its creation can provide a few clues as to its age.
In a 1985 article in the Creation/Evolution Journal, John R. Cole described the hammer as "of recent American historical style," which points its likely age to the mid-19th Century at the earliest.
How did it get into the rock in the first place?
Although the layer of rock the hammer was found in could be up to 115 million years old, that doesn't mean that everything found in that layer necessarily has to share its age.
As Cole put it, "Minerals in solution can harden around an intrusive object dropped in a crack or simply left on the ground if the source rock [...] is chemically soluble."
It can happen surprisingly quickly.
In other words, it's not impossible for the rock to have closed around the London Hammer after it was placed on it at some point during the mid-19th Century.
And if that seems like too little time for a rock to do so, Cole noted that coral reefs in the Pacific have accumulated enough limestone deposits since World War II to trap artifacts from the war inside.
So what actually happened?
It would be hard to know exactly what sequence of events led the London Hammer to its resting place even if its exact age was publically available, but the most plausible theories suggest that dissolved sediment hardened around it after it found its way next to Red Creek.
Given that proximity, it's possible that the creek itself carried the hammer after it had been discarded.
An even more likely scenario
However, the most commonly accepted explanation within the scientific community for how the London Hammer ended up in Texas is also the simplest.
It was used by a miner working in the region, who forgot it among the rocks he was breaking through. And since he would've been extracting resources from old rock layers, there would have been ample room for the hammer to rest before enough sediment built and compacted around it.
It's not that deep
Ultimately, the preponderance of evidence surrounding the London Hammer makes its discovery far more likely to be the fascinating consequence of a simple mistake than anything that fundamentally changes humanity's understanding of its history.
In Kuban's words, "Unless Baugh or others can provide rigorous evidence that the hammer was once naturally situated in a pre-Quaternary stratum, it remains merely a curiosity, not a reliable out-of-place artifact."
