The Ancient Machine Found in an Alabama Coal Seam in 1883 — The Creek Said It Was Left Behind

In October of 1883, at the Pratt mines northwest of Birmingham, Alabama, two coal miners struck something in a four-foot seam that rang instead of breaking. What they uncovered was thirty-one feet long: three flat blades set in one block, two toothed rings, and a barrel sheathed in small rectangular plates. A volunteer of the Geological Survey of Alabama measured it for eleven days before the creek flooded the cut and the company filled it in. A hundred and twenty-four years earlier, in the square of the Muscogee town of Tukabatchee, an old chief had told an English trader about seven sacred plates: five of copper, two of brass, given to the town's ancestors and never made by it. In 1836, when the Creek were removed from Alabama, six men carried those plates west on their backs, a mile ahead of everyone else. This film sets the two records side by side: the field book and the telling, the measurements of 1851 and the measurements of 1883, the five empty seats and the two round ones. It also gives the ordinary explanation its full weight — a fossil tree, warm pyrite, a borrowed number — and follows the single plate that was sent to Washington and never entered in any book. Which should be done first: put down the drill, or carry the paper? This documentary examines historical records, archaeological research, and Indigenous oral traditions. It presents documented findings alongside long-standing questions that remain open. Where accounts differ, both are presented. Nothing here is offered as a settled conclusion. #AlabamaHistory #MuscogeeCreek #AncientMachine 0:00 The discovery at Pratt mines 1:52 Geology and history 4:48 First record: The field book 10:21 Exposing the object 13:06 Analysis and measurement 15:55 The tree hypothesis 19:04 Abandoning the site 20:05 Third record: Tribal memory 23:26 Comparing the two records 26:47 The pencil rubbing 29:46 Fourth record: The drill log 34:44 Fifth record: Regional context 38:58 Sixth record: Loss and silence 43:48 Unresolved questions