At first glance, the question of what an artifact is is related to archeology and literature. Artifacts appear in historical descriptions, fantasy, quests and horror films. But, in fact, the meaning of this term is much broader.
What is an artifact?
The word comes from the Latin artefactum, which translates as "artificially made." This means that only unnatural objects, phenomena, processes can be attributed to artifacts. This is all that results from the material or spiritual activities of man. That is, when answering the question about what an artifact is, we mean not only objects, but also the expressed thought, social organization, the transmitted message. Each artifact has not only material expression, but also necessarily semantic content.
In science, culture and entertainment
If we are talking about culture, then an artifact can be called works of art, various superstitions, works of folklore, and handmade objects. In science, this is the result of an experiment that was influenced by unforeseen factors. A unique formula is what an artifact is in mathematics. In document management, this concept denotes various effects that are not related to the content of the document: spots, drawings, etc.
This term exists even in psychiatry. There, the clinic’s artifact is called the inadequate actions of patients who find themselves in an incomprehensible or new situation. In computer role-playing online games, rare artifacts are called artifacts that give the player strength and other advantages.
Artifacts of history
Scientists distinguish several groups related to the past of human civilization. Artifacts in the culture of the ancients are objects that have a symbolic meaning. Paleoartifacts or unidentified fossil objects are things created by someone before the emergence of Homo sapiens. Based on such finds, some researchers put forward numerous hypotheses about the origin and history of our planet. From the point of view of traditional science, unidentified objects are still not artificial, but natural formations, very similar to man-made objects.
In the 20th century, writer and scholar Ivan Terence Sanderson coined the word out-of-place artifact, which means "inappropriate artifact." So called objects and objects found in unusual places and forcing scientists to puzzle over their origin and destination.
Where did the box come from?
At the end of the 19th century in Austria, miners in a piece of coal found a strange metal object of the correct shape, which was called the salzburg parallelepiped at the location of the find. A pair of opposing sides were rounded, and the other four sides were marked with a deep notch. Ufologists are inclined to consider this find a gift of extraterrestrial civilizations. Traditional science declares it an element of an ancient mining winch.
Mysterious spheres
In Africa, unusual balls were found with regular grooves surrounding the circumference. They were dubbed the Klerksdorp balls. At first glance, they are made of metal by the hand of a rational being. But scientists have found that the mysterious artifacts of the past consist of the hematite mineral and are of natural origin.
Mysterious tracks
In the US state of Kentucky, geologists found well-preserved traces of human sandals in sandstone that could have been left 250 million years ago, while modern science claims that humanity is no more than 5 million years old. Scientists reject the fact that these are prints left by man. They claim that this is just a similar "drawing" on natural geological formations.
Impeccable designs
Ancient people could own technologies whose age is defined by scientists as much later. An example of this is the mechanism raised from the bowels of an ancient wreck near the Greek island of Antikythera. The object is an astronomical gear calendar, created around the hundredth year BC. e. Scientists were struck by the perfection of the antikythera mechanism, because until now similar inventions of a later period (the 6th century AD) were known, which were made much more primitive than the calendar found. This fact indicates, in particular, that modern science does not always rightly evaluate the intelligence and technical capabilities of our ancestors.
