It's strange, but totally true: the electrochemical cell battery, believed invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800, may have actually been discovered by the Ancient Mesopotamians in Iraq more than a millennium before. The jars suspected to be batteries were dubbed the Baghdad Batteries because of a peculiar theory about their possible significance.
In a paper published in 1940, the German curator of the National Museum of Iraq surmised that some strange terracotta jars discovered in a village near Baghdad in 1936 may have been galvanic batteries used for electroplating - a process by which a chemist uses a small electrical charge to magnetize one type of metal so that it will attract small particles of another metal and plate that substance on top of the original, making it appear to have changed properties from one metal to another. This is a simple process; in fact, most high school chemistry students are familiar with the process under the guise of the "Brass Penny Experiment" in which the students electroplate a copper penny in a brass solution.
Many disbelieve this theory, despite it's overwhelming plausibility - many experiments using replicas of the "batteries" for electroplating have been conducted and successful. There is a great deal of circumstantial evidence, as well as mythological clues. Take, for example, the legend of a magical science called alchemy; the primary and legendary goal of which was said to be the transmutation of ordinary metals (typically lead) into precious gold. Now, if you were an ancient, living a millennium ago and you saw someone conducting what is now referred to as the "Brass Penny Experiment", but with a gold solution in place of the brass, what other explanation would you have for this but magic? Is the Baghdad Battery the source for the myth of Alchemy?
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