Weird Science

I'm not sure I had heard of the Voynich Manuscript before this xkcd cartoon. But it did remind me of a couple of other artifacts whose existence I think extremely curious:

• The Antikythera Mechanism is a mechanical computer for calculating astronomical positions, and it dates from classical Greece.
• Piri Reis map dates, maybe, from before the Europeans had explored the New World, but yet shows the coast of South America and Anartica under the ice sheet.
• The Nazca lines are a series of drawings on a plateau in Peru dating from before Columbus and that make the most sense when viewed from the air.