The London Hammer (also known as the "London Artifact") is a name given to a hammer made of iron and wood that was found in

London, Texas London is an unincorporated community in northeast Kimble County, Texas, United States. According to the ''Handbook of Texas'', the community had an estimated population of 180 in 2000. History Len L. Lewis, a horse trader and former Union Army ...

in 1936. Part of the hammer is embedded in a limey rock concretion, leading to it being regarded by some as an anomalous artifact, asking how a man-made tool could come to be encased in

Lower Cretaceous Lower may refer to: *Lower (surname) *Lower Township, New Jersey *Lower Receiver (firearms) *Lower Wick Lower Wick is a small hamlet located in the county of Gloucestershire, England. It is situated about five miles south west of Dursley, eig ...

rock.

History

The hammer was purportedly found by a local couple, Max Hahn and a female friend, while out walking along the course of the Red Creek near the town of London. They spotted a curious piece of loose rock with a bit of wood embedded in it and took it home with them. A decade later, their son Max broke open the rock to find the concealed hammerhead within. The metal hammerhead is approximately long and has a diameter of , leading some to suggest that this hammer was not used for large projects, but rather for fine work or soft metal. The metal of the hammerhead consists of 96.6%

iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

, 2.6%

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element with the symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between them. Chlorine i ...

, and 0.74% sulfur. The Hammer began to attract wider attention after it was bought by

creationist Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 'th ...

Carl Baugh in 1983, who claimed the artifact was a "monumental 'pre-Flood' discovery." He has used it as the basis of speculation of how the atmospheric quality of a pre-

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

earth could have encouraged the growth of

giants A giant is a being of human appearance, sometimes of prodigious size and strength, common in folklore. Giant(s) or The Giant(s) may also refer to: Mythology and religion *Giants (Greek mythology) *Jötunn, a Germanic term often translated as 'gi ...

. Baugh's

Creation Evidence Museum The Creation Evidence Museum of Texas, originally Creation Evidences Museum,

purchased the hammer around 1983 and began to promote it as ‘the London Artifact’. Other observers have noted that the hammer is stylistically consistent with typical American tools manufactured in the region in the late 19th century. Its design is consistent with a miner's hammer. One possible explanation for the rock containing the artifact is that the highly

soluble In chemistry, solubility is the ability of a substance, the solute, to form a solution with another substance, the solvent. Insolubility is the opposite property, the inability of the solute to form such a solution. The extent of the solubi ...

minerals in the ancient

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

may have formed a

concretion A concretion is a hard, compact mass of matter formed by the precipitation of mineral cement within the spaces between particles, and is found in sedimentary rock or soil. Concretions are often ovoid or spherical in shape, although irregular ...

around the object, via a common process (like that of a petrifying well) which often creates similar encrustations around fossils and other nuclei in a relatively short time.

References

{{coord missing, Texas 19th-century works 1936 archaeological discoveries Creationism Pseudoarchaeology Hammers Iron objects Individual wooden objects