And then there is Tiauanaco. 15,000 years old. 14,000 feet up.
Stones the size of your house. Probably the finest stone work in the world.
You have to admit, it is quite interesting. When supposedly primitive and
also the most ancient peoples start to precision machine stones like granite
to nasa standards , it does make you scratch your head.
We will never know.
Dan

We cannot replicate them with our technology, but I bet we can replicate them with thier technology. We know how, the question is, is it worth the human sacrifices?

We do have them, we have figured out how they did them. We just have different methods that make their methods barbaric with our standards.

It's hard to imagine because we don't see it done.

What is the human cost that you would be willing to sacrifice for something like that?

Just one death, or a handful of injuries on a major building project nowadays is enough to shut something down.
Back then, it was the normal cost of construction. In fact even as recent as the building of the railroads, it was measured in miles per fatality, or something like that. (or was that dam construction, or something?)

__________________
Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I think you've chosen the wrong word here. I would replace "cannot" with "do not". It isn't that our level of technology isn't up to the task. We're just not interested enough in applying it to the problem. We have very little reason to invest in the equipment, materials, and techniques necessary to build a pyramid similar to those built thousands of years ago. Oh sure, there's academic curiousity but who's going to bankroll that?

__________________
Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska
─────────────────────────────────────────────
My moderation comments will appear in this color.
To report a post (even this one) to the moderation team, click the reporting icon in the upper-right corner of the post:
─────────────────────────────────────────────
◄ Rules For Posting To This Board ► ◄ Forum FAQs ► ◄ Conspiracy Theory Advice ► ◄ Alternate Theory Advice ►

...and beyond that, where are you going to get the multitude of slaves to actually "do" the work?

__________________
"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Oh, and it's Mayanist, not Mayanologist.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I prefer Mayanologist. Not to be confused with Mayonologist; a specialist in the field of mayonayse production techniques throughout history.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

i'm glad someone is looking at it my way

...Um, are you aware that the Pyramids were built by paid, free laborers, as Egyptologists have known for decades? The rock-toting slave image went out with spats and gaiter-buttons.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

'precision machine'? what does that mean? grinding stone on stone will produce a highly polished flat surface.

how many granite blocks do NASA produce? What is the NASA standard for granite?

__________________
All Moderation in Purple
To report a post (even this one) to the moderation team, click the reporting icon in the upper-right corner of the post:
─────────────────────────────────────────────
◄Rules For Posting To This Board ► ◄Forum FAQs ► ◄ Conspiracy Theory Advice ► ◄ Alternate Theory Advice ►

Ive seen "Ancient Aliens" and its entertaining to say the least.

I actually liked the show. Some of it was garbage while some of it was thought provoking.

The show needed more balance and less crazy hair guy though.

You do realize that its ok not to have all the answers?
What about the rest of his post? Poking a hole in his bad expression does not dismiss the fact that the body of his statement is still interesting.

Hi, It's not just flat rocks. There are some specifically interesting interlocking stone works at Tiauanaco that defy and stump the best minds in the world. Yes, with a good cad program and enough diamond tipped tools
we could reproduce some of that precision engineering. They made it look like they could 'Play with it". I often wonder.... just how old that site really is.
It is quite a head scratcher.
Do I believe et built it? No. And I would need a massive crane and some
pretty good cable to move and set stones on the order of 40 tons and better.
If you have ever done any stone work at all( I have done some) you have to take your hat off to a people who could carve up and greet such massive stone work at such unusual greeting angles and irregular notching to dovetail adjacent stonework ... and do it at 12,000 feet above sea level.
And we are not talking soft limestone. This is hard andesite.
To say that Tiaunaco is interesting ,in engineering terms, must be the
understatement of all time.
I have seen a professor of archeology who worked at doing some of the simpler early stone using crude rock hammers of hard stone found in riverbeds
which served ,with repeated blows, to abraid stones, given enough time,
and generated the rounded edges and good fit ( after repeated matching of surfaces) that we see in evidence at Sacsayhuaman and other places.
But, I don't see how they could set up, plane and reset to such precision
stones..... great stones of fantastic size, yea gargantuan size.... over and over and over until at last satisfaction was attained.
I find this accomplishment extraordinary. Especially for an ancient people.

Best regards,
Dan

Knowledge gets lost. Skills get lost. Technology gets lost. There are plenty of things ancient people did that we can't, nothing mysterious about it except that time passes and information degrades. Entropy likes doing that, that's its job, and it's good at it.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

In the future the will have people claiming aleins made nuclear bombs dropping them over Iraq.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

http://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/

Japan you mean. Hopefully.

__________________
‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

There are several things a large group of motivated people with lots of time on their hands can accomplish. And even then, it can be argued they did make mistakes in regards to the development of the pyramids (namely, the Bent Pyramid of Dahshur).

Don't underestimate the power of teamwork. And free time.

How about the collasped pyramid at Meidum? I can imagine what they said
when and after that happened. Probably egyptian for
"Well,.... back to the drawing board."

Dan

I was making fun of how inaccurate some of the ufo experts are.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

http://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/

As anybody who's seen 10,000 BC knows, the pyramids in Egypt were built with the assistance of wooly mammoths. No wonder they became extinct - working in that heat ,under all that thick fur.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

I've never understood why that simple fact is so difficult for some people to accept. As a bit of an archeaologist type, it's something that always vaguely niggles at me - along with assumptions like:

a) Two different groups of people, unrelated and not in contact, could not possibly have independently come up with a similar solution to a common problem.

b) People in the past were stupid, and so must have had help with some of their greatest achievements.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Arguably, if you go back to before Sneferu, the pyramids did have a stepped design that superficially looks like the Mayan pyramids, but normally those aren't the ones talked about by the people claiming a common origin.
The bit about different function still applies.

__________________
‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

I was watching "Stonehenge Decoded" last night. I thought there was a lot of guessing being passed off as fact, but it was still an interesting show, and more to the point, had an interesting bit of information that I feel is pertinent here. And yes, I know we're talking pyramids here, but some have have also claimed that Stonehenge was "built by higher beings".

Flaws. Stonehenge has a rather interesting one, in which one of the horizontal stones had the "sockets" for the notches carved on the wrong side. They were well into creating them before someone noticed the error. I think it would be funny to claim that aliens flew to earth from gods knows where, used some fancy technology to build these marvels, and then proceeded to carve notches on the wrong side of a stone.

Have any similar flaws been found on pyramid structures in Egypt? (Not being sarcastic; I've never studied Pyramids or Egyptian history).

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

"Stonehenge Decoded" - is that the one that's about the Stonehenge Riverside Project, under Mike Parker Pearson? So many Stonehenge TV shows, can never remember which is which. Parker Pearson's work at Stonehenge, I think, is the closest we've got yet to the function of the site. I especially admire the way his ideas superbly fit the similar ritual landscapes in Scotland with which I am well acquainted.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

To be honest, it was about 1 am and I was barely awake for it. Sounds right. It was about the theory that Stonehenge was used as a ritual center for the start of spring, and that the people would start at Stonehenge in the morning, then move upstream to the second wooden structure by nightfall.

It was nice to see a program that had absolutely zero content about aliens or paranormal involvement. The "too much guessing" I was referring to was the "The people were feeling this emotion as they made their way up to here. Then there was a great outburst of this other emotion" etc etc. Storytelling. I know that's what they do. I'm just more of the mindset to stick with the "we found this artifact here. These bones there" and not try to pretend I knew what each person was thinking back then.

But again, that's just the difference in opinions. And the work they had done seemed sound.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Cool. The TV show is, of course, given as entertainment - but, unusually for Stonehenge, the ideas it presents are actually standing on the solid foundations of some excellent archaeological work. From memory, that actual work isn't really discussed on the show to any useful extent.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

A little bit, but you're right. It's mostly a narrative of how they think the structures were used.

But anyway, not to derail this thread, the show made me wonder if the 'Aliens built the pyramids!' crowd was ignoring or glossing over more human aspects of the archetecture, similar to Stonehenge's wrong-side grooves, which I had never heard mentioned on any of the "Stonehenge mYsTeRy!! OoO!" type shows.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Oh, I'm sure even alien civil engineers can stand on a rake in the long grass every now and again.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Yes, but only superficially, too--unless the early Egyptian pyramids were designed to be entered at the top, which large numbers of the Mayan ones were.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Wow. I started re-watching this program in order to answer a question in the thread that was spun off. I forgot just how narrow mindedly these people approached the "evidence". Some of it is amusing, some of it frustrating, and some just sad. I'd love for Erich von Däniken et al to come try to debate this stuff here. Would be fun.

Now, wild supposition aside, some of the artifacts are extremely interesting.

I just think that it's an insult to my intelligence (what little I have, anyway), when they say things like "How could such similar myths ever appear in such vastly different cultures?", when there's soo many obvious myths that are similar that also appear in vastly different cultures. Warewolves. Dragons. Vampires. Bigfoot. Ghosts. Polymorphic animal gods.

Or, as I mentioned in the other thread, they say things like "This is obviously depicting an airplane, since it's tail is vertical and that's not something found in nature". Unless you count fish. Or sharks. Both of which are known to have held astounding importance to cultures both spiritually and as a source of food.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Fish or sharks?

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I'm no marine biologist, but I'm pretty confident that sharks are types of fish....

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.