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We recently published on the Tower of Babel, diving deep into scripture, ancient references, and the many surviving images of this legendary structure. But one particular depiction stood out—not for its drama, but for its precision.
The Engraving Unlike the Rest
It was an engraving, apparently dated 1670. Unlike the many romanticised paintings or symbolic interpretations we had seen—towers shaped like funnels, corkscrews, and ziggurats—this one was different. It almost felt like a photograph in pencil. The closer we looked, the more wonder emerged.
The image is layered in detail. Tiny figures move purposefully along stone ramps and terraces. The tower itself, centred and towering, is alive with activity, markets, homes, and building stations winding upward. Brick ovens smoulder at the base, feeding construction with fresh material. The design isn’t abstract, it’s coherent. It looks possible.
Our original focus had been the outcome and legacy of Babel: the scattering, the languages, the division. But here, in this engraving, it was the architecture that gripped us. And not just the tower itself, zooming out, you see other towers in the distance, echoing the same form. This wasn’t an anomaly. It was part of a network. A peak expression of tower-building—a Concorde, an A380, a Titanic. Something so advanced it stood as both triumph and final chapter.
But hidden in the pencil strokes—engraved quietly into the corner of this forgotten plate—was something odd. At first glance, it held no special meaning. But in context, it becomes a very big thing.
To be more precise: we found a very big camel.
The Babel Camel No One Talks About
As we wrapped up the article, the camel continued to nag at us.
It was a lot bigger than any camel we’d seen before. Taller, longer, more upright. It didn’t just look large, it looked wrong. The more we examined it, the clearer it became: this wasn’t the kind of camel you’d see plodding through the desert today. It had a long neck, a towering posture, and stood nearly twice the height of the man beside it.
It resembled a Titanotylopus, one of the so-called extinct giants of the camel family. Creatures we’re told disappeared millions of years ago, known only from fragments of bone in desert dig sites.
Yet here it was. Not a skeleton. Not a guess. But a living, loaded beast—drawn with accuracy and intent—carrying supplies at the base of the Tower of Babel.
That’s when the real questions began.
The Babel Camel
If this engraving really was made in 1670, how did the artist know what a Titanotylopus looked like? This wasn’t guesswork. The animal appears multiple times—walking, kneeling, loaded, led—each time drawn in a slightly different posture. That kind of detail doesn’t come from imagination. It comes from life.
But officially, no one in 1670 should have known this animal existed at all. Fossil records of extinct camelids wouldn’t be documented for another two hundred years.
To have such a vivid depiction of these camels in the image means they must have existed. And if they existed, then we may be looking at a true image of an extinct animal. That forces us to question the image’s provenance. We’ve seen enough verified works from 1670 to know that these camels were no longer living beings at the time, nor was the Tower still standing in its former glory.
We all accept that the tower could be drawn from imagination or myth, but the camel would have had to be seen. And if the camel was seen, then perhaps the tower was too. That would make this engraving far older than the 1670 date it now carries.
This image comes from a metal plate, a plate capable of surviving catastrophe. Floods, whether of water or mud, could not have destroyed it. It may have endured, hidden, waiting. Not a relic of fantasy, but a preserved snapshot of the world before.
A Signature That Came Later
Now we arrive at the signatures.
In the lower left corner, etched into the wall itself, we find the name Cst. Decker fecit: “Decker made this.” It looks natural, as though carved into the stone blocks of the image. It belongs.
But on the lower right, we see something different. A lighter script, in a flattened band that cuts across the lines of the image: I. Cruyl euditer delin. 1670. It’s out of place. It doesn’t flow with the architecture or follow the style. It was added later.
We believe the plate survived. And at some point, it was found, claimed, and rebranded. The date 1670 doesn’t mark the moment it was created, it marks the moment it was reclaimed.
What We’re Really Looking At
If this camel lived, it lived long after it was supposed to have vanished. Which means the timelines are wrong. The fossil record is incomplete. Or the extinction stories were simply that—stories.
But this isn’t just about a camel.
This is about the possibility that the Tower of Babel—long dismissed as allegory—was real. That it stood, not as myth, but as masterwork. That the world which built it was larger, stronger, and more advanced than the one we now inherit.
We may be looking at a survivor. Not just a beast out of time, but an image out of sequence—etched in a forgotten age, sealed in metal, and passed quietly through the centuries until someone slapped a new date on it and called it theirs.
Maybe the Tower did fall. Maybe the languages were scattered. Or maybe this image is all that’s left of a memory far older than we’ve been told.
Either way, the plate speaks, and what it shows doesn’t fit the story we’ve inherited.
