Giorgio Tsoukalos revisits artifacts he believes provide "undeniable proof" of extraterrestrial contact, with the spotlight on Romania's Wedge of Aiud—a mysterious aluminum alloy object unearthed in 1973 alongside woolly mammoth bones 35 feet below the Mures River. Ancient astronaut theorists point to a puzzling detail: the wedge was analyzed multiple times and confirmed to be primarily aluminum, a metal humans didn't refine until the 1800s, yet it was found in sediment layers potentially 40,000 years old. The object bears what appears to be an ancient patina that theorists argue cannot be artificially created, and its shape suggests a manufactured tool—possibly resembling an excavator tooth, though aluminum would be far too soft for such use. Museum curator Ana Gruia candidly admits the institution considers it "a strange piece" with genuine uncertainties about its dating, composition, and purpose.
Mainstream archaeology offers more prosaic explanations: the wedge's stratigraphic context remains disputed, and some researchers suggest it could be a modern object that migrated into older sediment layers through natural processes or contamination during the original excavation. Aluminum alloys have been commercially produced since the late 19th century, and without rigorous peer-reviewed dating of the object itself—rather than just the surrounding bones—its true age remains unverified. Still, the episode offers genuine intrigue for skeptics: the museum's own admission of uncertainty, the rare hands-on access to a controversial artifact deliberately kept from public view since the 1970s, and the unresolved questions about how such an object ended up in that particular archaeological context.
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