There are many legends that tend to surface now and again. They’re dubious, lack sources, and have images attached to them with no clear origin. The mysterious Aluminum Wedge of Aiud is one such legend.
As the story goes, in 1974 workers were digging in an area east of Aiud, Romania, near the banks of the Mures river, when they came upon three objects buried a little over 30 feet deep in the sand.
Two of the objects were bones of the long extinct Mastodon, a distant relative of modern-day elephants that existed up to about 11,000 years ago.
The other object – the one we’re interested in today – was a seemingly anachronistic item shaped like a wedge.
What Is the Wedge of Aiud?
The object, thought curious enough to warrant investigation, was sent to the so-called Archeological Institute of Cluj-Napoca. There, researchers weighed and measured the object: it was 5 pounds, and measured 8.25 x 5 x 2.75 inches. More importantly, they were able to discern its composition, an alloy containing 89% aluminum, as well as 6.2% copper, 2.85% silicon, 1.81% zinc, 0.0003% bismuth, 0.0002% silver, and trace amounts of gallium. It was also covered in a layer of aluminum oxide.
What’s strangest about this finding is that metal aluminum was not produced until 1825, and it was only in the later 1800s that it became more commonplace. And yet this wedge, if we are to take this story at face value, was unearthed among fossils dating back 11,000 years.
Its oxide layer, as well, allegedly confirmed that the object was, at the very least, “three-hundred or four-hundred years old.”
Was this aluminum wedge found near Aiud an out-of-place artifact?
An object out of time?
Strange Possibilities
Perhaps, perhaps not. Supposedly, an aeronautical engineer determined that the object could have belonged to the landing gear of a VTOL aircraft, a craft that can take off and land vertically. This raised a different possibility.
As the legend of the mysterious wedge circulates today, many believe it could be evidence of ancient visits by extraterrestrials, remnants of a craft that had crashed near the river. Yet another possibility remains – that the wedge was part of a vimana, an ancient flying machine created right here on Earth.
Aluminum Bucket Tooth of Aiud?
There are, of course, more probable explanations.
The most likely one is that the wedge is nothing more than a modern-day aluminum excavator bucket tooth. This blog outlines the reasoning fairly well – an excavator had been digging in the area and a tooth broke off. Later, the mining or excavation ended for whatever reason, and years after that, when the “wedge” was discovered, those who found it were simply unfamiliar with excavator buckets. A mystery was born.
But this, too, is conjecture. It’s a story with no clear ending. Last was heard of the Wedge of Aiud itself, it had been donated to the Museum of the History of Transylvania. There it presumably sits to this day.
Some mysteries are truly unexplainable. Some have perfectly logical explanations that perhaps lessen the mystique when all is said and done. What do we make of the Aluminum Wedge of Aiud? An object out of time, a relic of ancient visitation or prehistorical flying machines? A deliberate hoax? Or is it simply a modern piece of metal that found its way deep into the sands of Romania?
The truth, as always, is yours to decide.
