Curiosity - What Is The Oldest Item You Have Ever Found?

[GotAU?]

I know it’s not detectable, but it’s old and I found it. 518-million year old trilobite fossils. These are really old, especially for what was to become some desert mountains of today in California.

All of Earth’s landscape looked much like Mars back then. There were no plants or animals of any kind on the land, save some algae crusts growing next to the ocean's edge and an occasional sea snail nibbling on it in the tidal zones. There were no vertebrate animals swimming in the oceans, in fact, the super continent Pangea had not formed for another 200 million years, and dinosaurs did not exist for another 290 million years after the death of this trilobite.

[Bob Sickler]

The oldest find I made using a metal detector is unfortunately something still lost in my house somewhere! Not sure I would be able to photograph it well enough for you to see it, even if I could locate it again. I was hunting alongside the Hudson River many years ago looking for anything hopefully dropped by early settlers or trappers. When I got down to retrieve a target (later being a pull-tab under leaves 😞), my eye caught partially buried "rock" chunks that were lighter colored than the surrounding terrain, light-brown to be exact. I noticed (long before glasses) a shiny patina... GLAZE! I had found chunks of fired pottery! As I turned over one larger piece, I could actually see someone's palm and finger prints in the clay! Someone (likely Indians) making pottery left their anonymous personal identity! That one still gives me goose-bumps friends!

[Bob Sickler]

I got to thinking about my glaze theory and I remember seeing real NYS Indian pottery once and it didn't look shiny. The site was remote though with no (other than the passerby pull-tab 🙂) signs of habitation. What I do know is the human prints were under some sort of shiny hard coating. Almost looked like somebody glazed clay chunks that did not resemble any form of pottery. Maybe they were from a kiln explosion? Any experts out there?  Now I will be looking again for this!