Baigong Pipes

The Claim

There’s a set of ancient pipes over 100,000 years old, built into the back of a cave

The Baigong pipes are an anomaly found on and within White Mountain in the Qinghai province of China. They are a series of pipe-like formations that can be found within 3 caves in the mountain, though the entrances to the smaller 2 caves have collapsed, leaving only the largest 18-foot high cave still accessible.

The pipes are also on the surface just above the entrance to the largest cave, and so far, no one has come up with an acceptable explanation as to what they are or how they got there.

There are 2 of these pipes within the cave, measuring 16 inches in diameter, and several dozen upright pipes ranging between 4 and 16 inches in diameter on the surface area above the cave. Though they may look strange, sometimes things like this can be put down to natural phenomena, and there are a few explanations along this line as to what they could be.

The Common Explanation for the Baigong Pipes

The most accepted explanation is that the pipes are merely fossilised trees or roots. With their state turning them into an almost stone-like material, and giving them the appearance of old iron pipes. An article in Xinmin Weekly claimed a team of Chinese scientists used atomic emission spectroscopy (whatever the hell that is) to determine what the pipes were made of. They detected high levels of organic plant matter, leading to the conclusion of some sort of petrified tree.

This sounds quite reasonable, but another investigation conducted at a local smelter found there to be high levels of oxidised iron in the material, something that isn’t found naturally in these kinds of formations. This would, of course, suggest that the pipes are man-made, which wouldn’t seem so strange if they hadn’t been dated at over 100,000 years old. Different investigations provide different results, with the highest estimates putting them in the area of 150,000 years old, but most estimates conclude them to be at least 50,000 years old.

If they are artificial, there is simply no way that humans could have built them, as we weren’t really “human” 100,000 years ago, like we are today, and people were not even close to being able to use pottery at that time, never mind metal.

Yet another article that featured in a state-run newspaper called “People Daily” in 2007 claimed that an investigation by the Chinese earthquake administration found some of the pipes to be highly radioactive. If this is true, then they are most definitely artificial and not just some old trees, as organic matter has great difficulty in holding radiation for extended periods, and if some kind of radioactive emission did happen in the cave at some point, the walls would be more radioactive than the pipes.

But then again, this is just an article in a less-than-credible newspaper, so who’s to say? There doesn’t seem to have been any recent investigations into the pipes, and today the Chinese government openly advertises them as a tourist attraction.

Suggested origins of the Pipes

Aliens

It’s almost impossible to talk about something like this without plenty of people stating that it must have been built by aliens. It’s an interesting thought that another species came to earth for some reason and built whatever it was in those caves, but there is a complete lack of any evidence that even suggests the possibility of alien creation.

An Ancient long-lost Civilisation

For a quick context on the timescale, anatomically similar humans, which are our ancestors that had the same bodies as us, appeared around 200,000 years ago. It wasn’t until around 50,000 years ago that our brains developed and we started to get smarter, eventually leading to the first metal age, which started in Britain around 3,500 BCE. The highest level of technology on earth 100,000 years ago would have been a sharpened piece of flint. Pottery and metal were 10’s of thousands of years away, so it seems highly unlikely an ancient civilisation built an empire that left no evidence behind other than a load of pipes in a cave.

Natural Formation

This is the most commonly believed theory and also the most likely. It’s thought that the pipes are the trunks of trees that grew close together before dying and being pressed into place by other trees. Over time, this group of trees petrified and turned into the plant equivalent of fossils. Another theory as to why they are so tightly packed is that the trees were pushed over by weather effects, such as a bad storm or a huge mudslide, which are common in the region. The trees were pushed together against the side of the mountain before being buried by soil, leading to their petrified state.

What about the single pipes surrounded by stone?

These are the hottest debated parts of the anomaly and create the most questions. Going with the natural formation theory, these are believed to be the roots of trees, or possibly trees that grew into the cave and up through its ceiling. This explanation doesn’t sit well with everyone, and the stone-enclosed pipes keep the artificially created theory alive and well.