The London Hammer was discovered in 1936 on a a ledge by a waterfall near the town of London, Texas. The couple who discovered it were out for a stroll and spotted a peculiar stone with a piece of wood jutting out of it.
The stone is a limy rock concretion, they took it home and there it remained for a decade until their son broke it open and discovered the hammer head at the end of the wooden handle.
A man made artifact, a hammer embedded in stone is regarded as evidence of human presence in extreme antiquity. Not just human presence but intelligent humans who were able to make and use tools as well as forge metal.
Dr. Carl Baugh, a Creationist advocate and researcher obtained the artifact in the 1980s and had a laboratory conduct some tests on it. It is comprised of 96.6% iron, 2.6% chlorine, and 0.74% sulfur. A micro probe was used to examine the hammer and the rock in which it was embedded. It was determined that the hammer was made using an advanced process of metallurgy. They stated that the hammer could not possibly have been formed by a random meteor and that it was most certainly of intelligent design. They were further convinced that the rock which contained the hammer would not have formed without a large amount of water and tremendous pressure, such as volcanic pressure. The hammer is currently on exhibit at the Creation Evidence Museum, which sells replicas of it to visitors.
Carl Baugh does not have an impeccable reputation, in fact he is regarded by many fellow creationists as a showman in the genre of PT Barnum. His dubious reputation does not however disqualify the artifact, nor does it lend any credibility to naysayers who believe the artifact is an 18th century miners hammer.
A 1983 report in Creation Ex Nihilo, a creationist publication, stated the hammer was "in limestone dated at 300 million years old". A 1984 CEN article stated that the hammer was in "Ordovician rock, and possibly around 400 million years old" And a followup report published in 1985 by CEN claimed, "the rocks associated with the hammer are supposedly some 400-500 million years old". So although precise dating on the rock is apparently not in concurrence - there is very little chance of the rock being formed within a single century.
No one has adequately explained how stone could form in as few as 100 years. A theory that it could have formed by a process similar to that of 'petrifying wells' has been presented. An object placed in a petrifying well and left there for months or even years acquires a stony coating. It is an entirely natural phenomenon which although very rare does occur in water with an extremely high mineral content.
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