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Ancient Marvels: Skillful Humans Or Helpful Aliens?

blessmycottonsocks said:
The ancient Norias (water wheels) of Hama in Syria deserve a mention here.

Norias were in use near Hama by 350 AD, with the great wheel - Noria al-Muhammadiya with its 21 metre/69feet diameter being built in 1361 AD. For nearly 500 years, this was the tallest waterwheel in the world. In 1854 it was surpassed by the Laxey Wheel, a mine-pumping waterwheel on the Isle of Man, which was marginally larger at 22.1 metres.

Astonishing (fairly) ancient technology, which has survived the centuries and countless wars in the region. Some of the Norias were damaged in Assad's air assault in 1982, but were subsequently repaired.

The photos of local youths grabbing onto the wheel to be hoisted up (it takes around one minute to rotate) and then leaping into what looks like dangerously shallow water, are terrifying!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norias_of_Hama
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In Action!
 
charliebrown said:
Do you support Erich Von Daniken’s belief that ancient aliens built impossible structures of huge stones weighing several

tons, and UFOs and aliens here been on earth for thousands of years ?

I believe Von Daniken is correct.

I know the truth, and it will come out.

I know I could be dead by then.
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Have you read Signs of the Gods? Daniken has certain views about race that form the basis for his conclusions. I'd recommend reading it. Maybe you'll agree, maybe you won't.
 
Daniken was just a racist bastard talking pseudoscientific bollocks.
In many cases he was deliberately lying.
Here's a post I made back in 2018, concerning his own admission of lying in Gold of the Gods.
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...ds-bbc-nova-program.63575/page-2#post-1743909
eburacum said:
But he has admitted, with some pride, that he is a liar. He said that large sections of The Gold of the Gods were untrue, but were instead something he called dramaturgische Effekte (theatrical effects). Von Daniken claimed to have seen, with his own eyes, 'mounds of gold' in a cave, but this was nothing more than dramaturgische Effekte - i.e. a lie.
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There are stone structures in the world that even today couldn’t be built with modern equipment.

The largest stone blocks in the world at 1,500 tons each at Baalbek are a real mystery.
 
charliebrown said:
There are stone structures in the world that even today couldn’t be built with modern equipment.

The largest stone blocks in the world at 1,500 tons each at Baalbek are a real mystery.
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Well not much of a mystery. They never got moved out of the quarry, meaning they bit off more than they could chew.
The heaviest stone ever moved, though, is in Russia. The Thunderstone under the Bronze Horseman.
 
charliebrown said:
There are stone structures in the world that even today couldn’t be built with modern equipment.

The largest stone blocks in the world at 1,500 tons each at Baalbek are a real mystery.
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Please tell me which ones. It's very probable I've been missing them!
 
Frideswide said:
Please tell me which ones. It's very probable I've been missing them!
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Shoulda gone to Specsavers!
greatest-baalbek-stones-1200.jpg
 
If you consider that Romans developed waterproof cement and many of their ancient structures remain to this day, the idea that an ancient people can't build what we could is really arrogant.
If you have the population, if you have the motivation, if you have planning, and if you have problem-solving skills, then you can build giant things. Just because we would have difficulty persuading thousands of workers to build them without mechanisation is not a good line.
Few modern people can use natural methods to create fire, such as stick friction, flints etc., without training and motivation. This is like them saying "because we can't imagine how primitive man created fire without matches etc. then it has to be alien technology, eh?"

And as an aside, I once work with a young man who was convinced aliens built the Great Pyramid because he thought it was made out of one solid peice of stone! Once disabused of this notion and learned it was made with giant blocks, he was okay with it.
 
Sacsayhuaman in the Peruvian Andes where 360 ton stones were precisionally placed in such a manner that there is no room between the massive stones.

Modern engineering would have trouble doing the same today.
 
Have you seen pre-fabricated concrete buildings and the gap tolerances? Even stone-built churches and cathedrals - try fitting a razorblade between the blocks, even without mortar.
All it takes is a skilled stonemason and time.
 
charliebrown said:
Sacsayhuaman in the Peruvian Andes where 360 ton stones were precisionally placed in such a manner that there is no room between the massive stones.

Modern engineering would have trouble doing the same today.
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er... no. Had we reason to do it, we could.

@charliebrown I used to work with engineers, both on site and in academic programmes. There was an intro lecture in the mid 1980s that took the line that everything that has already been done is still doable, and what the academics wanted to turn out where people who could do more.

If there was anything that engineers thought they couldn't do then they'd have been figuring out several solutions already. If something had been impossible in the 1960s it would have been replicated by the 1980s and so on.

Engineering is three dimensional problem solving. It's what it does.
 
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I just saying a block of rock weighing 360 tons times 2,000 lbs. per ton equals 720,000 lbs.

That is a lot of weight to move about.
 
charliebrown said:
Sacsayhuaman in the Peruvian Andes where 360 ton stones were precisionally placed in such a manner that there is no room between the massive stones.

Modern engineering would have trouble doing the same today.
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It's this I'm responding to here:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...s-or-helpful-aliens.60162/page-5#post-2254077
er... no. Had we reason to do it, we could.

@charliebrown I used to work with engineers, both on site and in academic programmes. There was an into lecture in the mid 1980s that took the line that everything that has already been done is still doable, and what the academics wanted to turn out where people who could do more.

If there was anything that engineers thought they couldn't do then they'd have been figuring out several solutions already. If something had been impossible in the 1960s it would have been replicated by the 1980s and so on.

Engineering is three dimensional problem solving. It's what it does.
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I note your Modern engineering would have trouble doing the same today. So I'm still asking which examples you are using here

There are stone structures in the world that even today couldn’t be built with modern equipment.
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I think someone once said "we can't do this today using the tools we know they had at the time." Meaning simply while we have a good idea of how they did it, the passing centuries of technological advancement has meant the know how has been lost.
A team of scientists and enthusiasts working for as long as their grant or funds last are going to have a challenge recreating techniques developed and perfected starting in the literal Stone Age.

So in that sense we can't do it today.

In another real sense you can visit a dollar store and pick up a stone carving that would have been a wonder if it popped up in an archaeological dig but is too cheap to make these days without outsourcing.
 
And we are constantly discovering 'lost' skills and methods. We are often challenged in our assumption that 'so-and-so' people did not use 'such-and-such' tools.
I'm fairly simplistic in my opinion: ancient folks built stuff because it patently exists*. We just don't know how. If we add ancient alien helpers in the mix, we can't prove those aliens existed by the creations of ancient peoples.

* A Descartian approach?
 
Stormkhan said:
And we are constantly discovering 'lost' skills and methods. We are often challenged in our assumption that 'so-and-so' people did not use 'such-and-such' tools.
I'm fairly simplistic in my opinion: ancient folks built stuff because it patently exists*. We just don't know how. If we add ancient alien helpers in the mix, we can't prove those aliens existed by the creations of ancient peoples.

* A Descartian approach?
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I'd be really cautious about saying we don't know how.
An example of this is I listened to a lecture by an archaeoligst where he stated we don't know how the H blocks at Pumu apunku were made.
But as I've a friend who was an archaeoligst who worked there I happen to know that there are blocks in every stage of manufacturing from being quarried to almost finished that were left behind.
These stones still have tool marks left, from pounding stones to drill marks, to sanding, and others that I don't personally know the names of.

We may not know the exact ways these tools were applied because the skill itself was lost. And recreating skills developed and maintained over generations is difficult.
Which is what the archaeoligst meant.

This is true in Egypt also, where we have many unfinished and broken artifacts in different stages of completion that provide valuable insight into the tools and methods used.

Speaking personally, I'm a hobbyist wood worker. Even having most of the same tools and materials I'm frequently in awe of what people accomplish from the same basic principles I work with.
And there are folks who can cut a straight line as well as I can with my table saw, and cleaner.
Knowing the tools and the basic principles helps you understand how it was done. But to really capture the methods takes a lot more time than people today can really dedicate to it.
 
In general response to the recent (and some not-so-recent) postings here, allow me to slide Occam's razor between some stone blocks.

I hope we can all agree that civilizations many hundreds or several thousands of years ago did some amazing things, both great and small. We can also agree that experts' explanations of how they did it can vary from "it's obvious" to "we have a good idea but will need some research to work out the details" to "that's a real head-scratcher". That last one can be applied not only to things like Greek fire and true Damascus steel, but also to more recent marvels as the Stradivarius violins or Trader Vic's original Mai Tai recipe. Few people would argue for an extraterrestrial influence on those things. (Well, maybe the Mai Tai.)

I used to work with Bob Brier, the guy who did so many TV shows about mummies and pyramids. When he was mummifying a human body according to what was then the accepted methods, he found that certain things (most notably removing the brain) could not be done by those methods. Did he give up? Did he pray to the aliens? No, he thought about it and found a solution that easily could have been done in ancient times.

We can't say aliens - by which I mean more than just people from other countries - didn't have a hand in ancient mysteries, but without sufficient evidence there's no reason to believe they did. We'll all have our own idea of what level is "sufficient", but for me it has to be more than legends of helpful gods or pictures that kinda look like stuff out of Star Wars. Your milage may vary, but I suggest you set the bar at least moderately high.
 
ChasFink said:
I used to work with Bob Brier, the guy who did so many TV shows about mummies and pyramids. When he was mummifying a human body according to what was then the accepted methods, he found that certain things (most notably removing the brain) could not be done by those methods. Did he give up? Did he pray to the aliens? No, he thought about it and found a solution that easily could have been done in ancient times.
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The widely accepted method was the little crochet hook-thingy, catching on to the goop and hoiking it out. I always thought a more thorough and easy method was to shove a lobotomy spike-type instrument up one nostril, give it a stir, do the same for the other nostril then, like an egg, blowing hard through one nostril. Works on eggs, eh?
Shame I couldn't get the funding to experiment. They said I wasn't a forensic scientist, medico, or even possess formal qualifications, which is just an excuse to stop me. :(
 
Stormkhan said:
The widely accepted method was the little crochet hook-thingy, catching on to the goop and hoiking it out. I always thought a more thorough and easy method was to shove a lobotomy spike-type instrument up one nostril, give it a stir, do the same for the other nostril then, like an egg, blowing hard through one nostril. Works on eggs, eh?
Shame I couldn't get the funding to experiment. They said I wasn't a forensic scientist, medico, or even possess formal qualifications, which is just an excuse to stop me. :(
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Ha! You're so close!

The hook-and-pull was a failure because the brain is moist and fragile; it just ripped. Brier used - if I remember correctly - a wire coat hanger to whip the brain up and then just tipped the body over to let it drip out. No blowing needed, although I guess it would help.
 
I'd give it a go. Bit stale, perhaps.
Calves brains are edible.
 
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