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Ancient Marvels: Skillful Humans Or Helpful Aliens?

Yeah, but the bragging rights over so-called gourmets from your hospice bed would be worth it.
 
WRT claims that we can't duplicate past human accomplishments, I think one needs to bear in mind that people are actually saying, "We can't do it with the resources likely to be devoted to such a project."

If we were willing to fund an institute for 400 years to painstakingly research the best ways of doing something, and then recruit and feed 20000 people for 40 years to do nothing but build the thing, then I bet we could recreate any past human accomplishment.

The famous Roman concrete is so good because it was mixed dry, which requires a great deal of tamping down over a long period of time for it to set correctly. The Romans had the slaves to do the work, and the patience to wait for the end result. The method isn't used now because people aren't willing to give up their sidewalks, among other infrastructure, for extended periods of time.
 
WRT claims that we can't duplicate past human accomplishments, I think one needs to bear in mind that people are actually saying, "We can't do it with the resources likely to be devoted to such a project."

If we were willing to fund an institute for 400 years to painstakingly research the best ways of doing something, and then recruit and feed 20000 people for 40 years to do nothing but build the thing, then I bet we could recreate any past human accomplishment.

The famous Roman concrete is so good because it was mixed dry, which requires a great deal of tamping down over a long period of time for it to set correctly. The Romans had the slaves to do the work, and the patience to wait for the end result. The method isn't used now because people aren't willing to give up their sidewalks, among other infrastructure, for extended periods of time.
And their concrete lasts so long because they didn't reinforce it with rebar.
 
Ancient Roman concrete was made with a certain kind of volcanic sand with sharp edges - i.e., not sand that had come from the sea.
This shattered crystalline structure gave it a better grip than 'rounded' sand.
 
Ancient Roman concrete was made with a certain kind of volcanic sand with sharp edges - i.e., not sand that had come from the sea.
This shattered crystalline structure gave it a better grip than 'rounded' sand.

Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?​

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230106144441.htm

During the hot mixing process, the lime clasts develop a characteristically brittle nanoparticulate architecture, creating an easily fractured and reactive calcium source, which, as the team proposed, could provide a critical self-healing functionality. As soon as tiny cracks start to form within the concrete, they can preferentially travel through the high-surface-area lime clasts. This material can then react with water, creating a calcium-saturated solution, which can recrystallize as calcium carbonate and quickly fill the crack, or react with pozzolanic materials to further strengthen the composite material. These reactions take place spontaneously and therefore automatically heal the cracks before they spread.
 
From Jason Colavito's eNewsletter • Vol. 23 • Issue 20 • November 12, 2023 •

This week, Australian UFO journalist Ross Coulthart completed his transformation from flying saucer caterpillar to full Ancient Aliens-style butterfly when he emerged as an ancient astronaut theorist in postings on X, formerly Twitter.

Coulthart reposted claims that Egyptian stone-working techniques were impossible without modern technology and heavily implied that he believed space aliens were behind ancient Egyptian wonders. In a podcast, he further displayed his kinship to his fellow UFO carnival barkers by accidentally admitting that the “sources” he relies on for claims such as his assertion that a spaceship the size of a football field lies buried beneath an unnamed federal building don’t actually have firsthand knowledge. He repeatedly claimed that his sources “think” UFOs are real and “We suspect there’s a coverup going on inside our own government. We think there are people in private aerospace that know a lot more than they’re letting on. We think there are people in our military and our intelligence services that are lying to cover it all up, and we think it was all part of a misguided attempt to conceal this during the Cold war…” People with firsthand knowledge of aliens wouldn’t “think” or “suspect” facts that they actually know. His sources would appear to be the same group of “insiders” who have mistaken paperback UFO books of the 1950s and 1960s for secret revelations since the 1950s and 1960s.
 
I'm sure if we ever get to travel to extra solar planets that NASA or whoever will be putting in lots of requests for funding to help build a 600 ft tall stone monument for the hunter gatherer octopodes of Tau Ceti 4 to use as a tomb for one of their leaders. :thought:
 
I'm sure if we ever get to travel to extra solar planets that NASA or whoever will be putting in lots of requests for funding to help build a 600 ft tall stone monument for the hunter gatherer octopodes of Tau Ceti 4 to use as a tomb for one of their leaders. :thought:

ls that the hunter gatherer octopodes that eat Jehovah’s Witnesses and shit Krugerrands? I think NASA might find a few bob under the sofa cushions for them.

maximus otter
 
From Jason Colavito's eNewsletter • Vol. 23 • Issue 20 • November 12, 2023 •

This week, Australian UFO journalist Ross Coulthart completed his transformation from flying saucer caterpillar to full Ancient Aliens-style butterfly when he emerged as an ancient astronaut theorist in postings on X, formerly Twitter.

Coulthart reposted claims that Egyptian stone-working techniques were impossible without modern technology and heavily implied that he believed space aliens were behind ancient Egyptian wonders. In a podcast, he further displayed his kinship to his fellow UFO carnival barkers by accidentally admitting that the “sources” he relies on for claims such as his assertion that a spaceship the size of a football field lies buried beneath an unnamed federal building don’t actually have firsthand knowledge. He repeatedly claimed that his sources “think” UFOs are real and “We suspect there’s a coverup going on inside our own government. We think there are people in private aerospace that know a lot more than they’re letting on. We think there are people in our military and our intelligence services that are lying to cover it all up, and we think it was all part of a misguided attempt to conceal this during the Cold war…” People with firsthand knowledge of aliens wouldn’t “think” or “suspect” facts that they actually know. His sources would appear to be the same group of “insiders” who have mistaken paperback UFO books of the 1950s and 1960s for secret revelations since the 1950s and 1960s.

Ok. nothing new here...move along.

(What is a UFO Journalist and why should we care what they say?)

But the Chinese and South american pyramids were built by the locals, werent they?
 
Dr David Clarke has written a new blog on 'Ancient Aliens':

"Ancient astronaut beliefs are dismissed by historians and scientists as far-fetched pseudoscience. This is certainly correct but these ideas have a long back story in popular culture that is worthy of study. As a teenager I devoured Erich von Daniken’s books and was hooked by the ITV show Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World with its striking opening titles that featured the mystical Mayan crystal skull. Although I was only a child when Apollo astronauts landed on the moon, as I grew older it seemed logical to believe that if humans could leave the Earth to explore our solar system then alien intelligences could also have done so long ago."

https://drclarke.substack.com/p/extraterrestrial-archaeology
 
Hi All,

Due to an abnormal life experience, I actually happened to research into the history to find if a highly advanced technology existed since way back in the past and following are the list of things that I managed to find in my research. Perhaps you all might have an interest in knowing these information. In my research I had to conclude that this technology still exist on Earth.

According to Randall Carlson, the location of Parthenon(a temple in Greece) on Earth has a correlation to it’s dimensions, therefore, he claims that someone has managed to measure the Earth for such an accuracy.

To [...] prove this view, we could analyse the distance between Kaaba in Mecca and the Western Wall:

For example the distance between Kaaba in Mecca and the Western Wall in Jerusalem is precisely 666.6 nautical miles. These two are the most sacred sites on Earth. Again, this implies that someone in the past knew how to measure great distances with such an accuracy. This doesn’t mean people who built it was able to measure these distances but our thoughts are being influenced when selecting these sites. http://www.secretsinplainsight.com/location-location-location/

[Moderator edit]
 
Dr David Clarke has written a new blog on 'Ancient Aliens':

"Ancient astronaut beliefs are dismissed by historians and scientists as far-fetched pseudoscience. This is certainly correct but these ideas have a long back story in popular culture that is worthy of study. As a teenager I devoured Erich von Daniken’s books and was hooked by the ITV show Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World with its striking opening titles that featured the mystical Mayan crystal skull. Although I was only a child when Apollo astronauts landed on the moon, as I grew older it seemed logical to believe that if humans could leave the Earth to explore our solar system then alien intelligences could also have done so long ago."

https://drclarke.substack.com/p/extraterrestrial-archaeology
I think so much of the 'aliens must have done it' comes from a huge misunderstanding of the capabilities of humanity in previous eras. We seem to see much of human evolution as basically 'stupid. stupid. stone-hitting stupid, metalworking-stupid Romans Vikings...' and not take into account that intelligence was at least as high in the past as it is now. So although previous generations might not have had the technology or equipment that we have today, they would have had other ways of working around problems. They were not knuckle-dragging urgh-men. Basically, if you can think it now, they could think it then, but it just might have taken them longer to work out how to achieve it.
 
I think so much of the 'aliens must have done it' comes from a huge misunderstanding of the capabilities of humanity in previous eras. We seem to see much of human evolution as basically 'stupid. stupid. stone-hitting stupid, metalworking-stupid Romans Vikings...' and not take into account that intelligence was at least as high in the past as it is now. So although previous generations might not have had the technology or equipment that we have today, they would have had other ways of working around problems. They were not knuckle-dragging urgh-men. Basically, if you can think it now, they could think it then, but it just might have taken them longer to work out how to achieve it.
Exactly.
The builders of Göbekli Tepe, the Pyramids and all those other ancient wonders were less formally educated than us, but certainly not more stupid!
 
The capabilities of past cultures have always been underestimated. In fact, they demonstrate knowledge that today we are "rediscovering" such as the energies of the earth, archaeoacoustics and other subjects linked to perceptions of nature that we are very far from understanding except for the measurement instruments that we use.

The movement of enormous blocks of stone is a constant in many civilizations throughout the world. This is an activity that is impossible to carry out without sufficient intelligence. The aliens may have visited our planet at some point, but they clearly did not spend the trip and stay moving huge blocks of stone or building megalithic temples.

It is a concept that disregards our capabilities but would also put the aliens in a really very disadvantageous position in terms of their evolution if they traveled such long distances to move stones from one place to another.
 
Well not much of a mystery. They never got moved out of the quarry, meaning they bit off more than they could chew.
Why not just cut it up into smaller bits then?

"1500 tons? We'll never shift this Julian. Why don't we just cut it into three pieces?"
"Cut it into three Augustus? What do you think we are, fitters? We're engineers Julian, engineers."

That's always puzzled me about Baalbeck. We have three bloody great big 800 ton rocks, moved about apparently on seaweed, wooden sledges and wet sand, but sat on rows of smaller blocks. Why not just carry on using the smaller blocks?

Presumably the space aliens refused them the use of the lasers, the magicians had run out of stone cutting mana, or they experienced a massive shortage of copper chisels.
 
Why not just cut it up into smaller bits then?

"1500 tons? We'll never shift this Julian. Why don't we just cut it into three pieces?"
"Cut it into three Augustus? What do you think we are, fitters? We're engineers Julian, engineers."

That's always puzzled me about Baalbeck. We have three bloody great big 800 ton rocks, moved about apparently on seaweed, wooden sledges and wet sand, but sat on rows of smaller blocks. Why not just carry on using the smaller blocks?

Presumably the space aliens refused them the use of the lasers, the magicians had run out of stone cutting mana, or they experienced a massive shortage of copper chisels.
Cards on table I don't know much about ancient engineering. I keep meaning to reach out to the people I know who have that expertise and then oh crap lookit that squirrel!

My assumption is that you have to have the large block set up to move as you're cutting it from the quarry. You'll notice most of the unfinished megalithic works are cut underneath before being freed from the bedrock. The huge blocks at Baalbeck are also at an angle, not cut flat like we see for smaller megalithic blocks.
So if you try to cut it up into smaller blocks it's going to fall, while still being multiple tons of weight.
Any sled or rollers would be crushed, and even if you've got a lubricant down it'll basically be stuck in place.

If as the French paper proposed they used ropes and winches and such if you cut it short you're still crushing and cutting the ropes tied to it.

This is of course if these blocks were meant to be for the trilithon itself and not part of a more ambitious part of the project that just ran out of funding or manpower at some point during construction.

The problem with questioning why people do or did things, though, is we tend to try to base it in logic.
Maybe the oracle of Jupiter at the temple declared that Jupiter wanted less big stones and more ornately carved reliefs or statues.
 
The thing is though, how many 'experts' have ever actually picked up a hammer and chisel and attacked a piece of stone with it- for hours every day- and made something very precise?

It's all very well sitting there with a pen and paper in a nice warm office and saying they did it this way and that way, but with no basic knowledge of what it actually requires to do what they did under the circumstances that they did it in.
 
The thing is though, how many 'experts' have ever actually picked up a hammer and chisel and attacked a piece of stone with it- for hours every day- and made something very precise?

It's all very well sitting there with a pen and paper in a nice warm office and saying they did it this way and that way, but with no basic knowledge of what it actually requires to do what they did under the circumstances that they did it in.
Lots. There's a entire field for it, experimental archaeology. Most of the statements about using bone, stone, copper or bronze tools comes from either experimental evidence, Denys Stocks being one of the more well known people for this, or directly studying megalithic or "stone age" people that existed into the modern day.

nias stone.jpg

Meanwhile you also have people who practice traditional stone working that are still around and lend their support, though obviously those traditions have been dieing out as modern technology becomes more mobile among other reasons.
And there's a large amount of unfinished material ancient cultures left behind that show all the tool marks left behind that are usually removed during the finishing process.

The idea that archaeologists are just sitting sitting in a cozy office and spinning theories is a bit of an odd one. A large chunk of their working time is spent in the field before examining the structures on site or artifacts in a lab. Part of that is reverse engineering how things were made or used.
It's the historians and alternative historians who mostly just do a field trip to sites or in the later case declare something is impossible.
Granted not every archaeologist is going to have a deeply personal knowledge of tool use, but that's why there's specialists in the field who do, as in every profession.

There are difficulties of course recreating the techniques. Most of the basic tools, scrappers, drills, chisels, pounders, so on, were in use for millenia before we get some of the amazing stone work that people fixate on. As those technologies were replaced the skills for those things were lost. Which isn't unusual, think about how much necessary skills have changed over the last century.

We just lack the sort of institutional knowledge you get from having a father raise his son and the son raising their son to do a job for centuries.
And well in the modern day we just lack the same sort of motivations. If you're an ancient Egyptian stone worker who isn't a master of his craft. You don't eat. While I'm sure the varieties of religious belief that existed today extend into the past, no one recreating the work today is worried about being punished by the Pharoah or offending Ra.
 
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Lots. There's a entire field for it, experimental archaeology. Most of the statements about using bone, stone, copper or bronze tools comes from either experimental evidence, Denys Stocks being one of the more well known people for this, or directly studying megalithic or "stone age" people that existed into the modern day.

View attachment 83889

Meanwhile you also have people who practice traditional stone working that are still around and lend their support, though obviously those traditions have been dieing out as modern technology becomes more mobile among other reasons.
And there's a large amount of unfinished material ancient cultures left behind that show all the tool marks left behind that are usually removed during the finishing process.

The idea that archaeologists are just sitting sitting in a cozy office and spinning theories is a bit of an odd one. A large chunk of their working time is spent in the field before examining the structures on site or artifacts in a lab. Part of that is reverse engineering how things were made or used.
It's the historians and alternative historians who mostly just do a field trip to sites or in the later case declare something is impossible.
Granted not every archaeologist is going to have a deeply personal knowledge of tool use, but that's why there's specialists in the field who do, as in every profession.
I'm not saying all, but a lot wouldn't have a clue how to move a large stone in real life, let alone carve one.
There are difficulties of course recreating the techniques. Most of the basic tools, scrappers, drills, chisels, pounders, so on, were in use for millenia before we get some of the amazing stone work that people fixate on. As those technologies were replaced the skills for those things were lost. Which isn't unusual, think about how much necessary skills have changed over the last century.
So if we know about these basic tools how come we don't know how to use them? I know how to use a drill, scrapper and chisel. What are these missing tools? Some kind of circular saw perhaps?

(I shall say this, the Egyptians did not achieve what they did with only copper chisels).

We just lack the sort of institutional knowledge you get from having a father raise his son and the son raising their son to do a job for centuries.
And well in the modern day we just lack the same sort of motivations. If you're an ancient Egyptian stone worker who isn't a master of his craft. You don't eat. While I'm sure the varieties of religious belief that existed today extend into the past, no one recreating the work today is worried about being punished by the Pharoah or offending Ra.
That's true, but when we are told that the Egyptians only had copper chisels it is irrelevant really. He had a hammer and a chisel and maybe rubbed a bit of sand here and there.

Then it just becomes a matter of time to do the job. There would be no big puzzle.
Mystery solved eh?
 
I'm not saying all, but a lot wouldn't have a clue how to move a large stone in real life, let alone carve one.
Based on what?
So if we know about these basic tools how come we don't know how to use them?
We do. The point is you don't really have anyone as skilled as someone who's life was dedicated on carrying on the practice from their ancestors around.
(I shall say this, the Egyptians did not achieve what they did with only copper chisels)
Good thing literally no egyptologist is saying that then?
That's true, but when we are told that the Egyptians only had copper chisels it is irrelevant really. He had a hammer and a chisel and maybe rubbed a bit of sand here and there.
Very honestly the only people I know who claim this are people like Chris Dunn or Graham Hancock.
I don't really know any Egyptologist who makes this claim unless you're trying to make a point using extreme hyperbole.
 
My assumption is that you have to have the large block set up to move as you're cutting it from the quarry. You'll notice most of the unfinished megalithic works are cut underneath before being freed from the bedrock. The huge blocks at Baalbeck are also at an angle, not cut flat like we see for smaller megalithic blocks.
So if you try to cut it up into smaller blocks it's going to fall, while still being multiple tons of weight.
Any sled or rollers would be crushed, and even if you've got a lubricant down it'll basically be stuck in place.
Thanks for that, but it still doesn't explain the three 800 ton buggers that sit on the baby blocks underneath.

And even though I think you have a good theory regarding the stuff in the quarry, as far as I know there are still two or three partially cut slabs which would qualify for your definition of an 'unfinished megalithic works'.

Why make the same mistake once? Twice? Even three times?
 
Stone blocks could be split by drilling entry holes or slits and using wood to plug them and then the application of water swells the wood and splits the rock.
 
Why make the same mistake once? Twice? Even three times?
They wouldn't have been worked on separately, but at the same time.
Thanks for that, but it still doesn't explain the three 800 ton buggers that sit on the baby blocks underneath.
Well my original reply was to a comment about how Baalbek couldn't be built with modern machinery, which is false.
But it also wasn't out of the capabilities of people bavk then either.
As far as shaping the stones goes they're just limestone. You don't need hard tools to work limestone, it's soft enough to be marked by a finger nail.
And by this point in the Roman era when this temple was built they were well into using iron.

Moving it is more impressive, but the stones aren't the heaviest moved in either the ancient era or more recent times using strictly man power alone.
While the Russian Thunderstone was moved using manpower partly because of the tricky location it was found in, Romans had been looting obelisks from Egypt for a long while. The block and tackle system they devised could be applied to these blocks as well and been used instead of brute manpower.
 
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