It appears to be just like any other ancient clay jar.

In fact, it's virtually indistinguishable from countless others just like it.

However, for a few fascinating reasons, this one particular clay jar is claimed by a few

fringe alternative history promoters to have been a battery.

Therefore proof that ancient civilizations had knowledge and command of electricity.

Today we're going to see if the so-called Baghdad battery is indeed what its proponents claim

it is.

And that's coming right up on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

Draining the Baghdad battery.

There's long been a tendency among alternative historians to think that, for some reason,

technology has actually been going backwards throughout history that whatever we know

now, the ancients knew better.

One of the figureheads of this school of thought is the Baghdad battery, a clay pot from

Iraq that some believe was used as a battery, and thus the ancient people were actually

centuries ahead of their European counterparts.

Today, we're going to discuss not only the details of what makes this claim demonstrably

true or false, but also the larger phenomenon of broken thought processes that lead so many

to embrace such beliefs as this one.

Let's have a look at the actual artifact.

It's a fired terracotta pot, quite small, only about 14 cm high and 8 cm across, narrow

...