The “official” story behind these sites is that stones were either picked up off the ground in these shapes, then fitted together, with maybe some light polishing by pumice or other soft stones.
In some cases (Egypt) the official narrative is that these stones were “rough hewn” from a quarry (with copper tools that came from MICHIGAN ore deposits), then somehow (???) smoothed and shaped with a precision practically unheard of in even modern construction. All by a culture that had never invented the wheel, apparently.
Clearly, humanity has risen to extreme heights in the past that we have trouble imagining (and duplicating) today.
Best documentary I’ve ever seen on the holes in the mainstream story of the Pyramids and their worldwide significance
then somehow (???) smoothed and shaped with a precision practically unheard of in even modern construction.
Check out the Easter Island statues. They were apparently built, and quarried, by hand. It just takes something like 10 years to wear the stone down.
I know it's boring, but my theory here is that people back then realized that they had nothing better to do with their lives than seeking perfection of craft. That's it. Because of that, they'll spend an entire week making a single stone perfectly fit it's alotted space, rather than churning out 100 "good enough" blocks and having to mortar them all to hide the faults.
None of us think that way today. No one here would spend ten years kicking rocks into shape because, surely, that time could be better spent learning, or arguing, or making money, or sitting around. But, if you believed in something greater than yourself, really believed, you could build something like this.
First time I've heard of Michigan copper in the old world, looks like an interesting rabbit hole to explore. Transatlantic trade secrets being lost in the bronze age collapse is definitely very possible.
It is a really interesting rabbit hole - i first came across it in, iirc, Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods and it helped tie together a few things that seemed anomalous but disconnected, like the level of sophistication seen in prehistoric America (the Mound Builders, South American pyramids with surrounding populations plausibly in the millions despite having all but vanished into barbaric cannibalistic remnants by the time Europeans show up), the common building patterns (e.g. megaliths, PSM, and pyramids) showing up around the globe, and so on. Hell, it even ties together with the Book of Mormon of all things lol!
I don't know much about masonry, so can you explain why this level of precision is remarkable? We have ancient statues with much more precise shapes going back allegedly 6000 years, including hard materials like marble. This article includes an ancient illustration of how Egyptian sculptors did their work, appearing to use stones to chisel away: https://www.thecollector.com/classical-art-marble-sculpting/. That article says for hard materials they used the same material to sculpt it. Couldn't that be how it was done in architecture as well if not with metal tools?
Perhaps I should have added the word “megalithic” (aka massive stones) to the title, I went with “polygonal stone masonry” because the last time I posted about this someone mentioned that was one of the names which research in this subject went under (so it could be easily searched for and more results/details could be found)
These stones get up to literally hundreds of tons - many easily over a million pounds. The notion that pre-industrial societies, societies lacking THE WHEEL (i.e. ancient egypt, ancient celts, etc) could quarry these stones, much less move them, MUCH LESS LIFT AND PLACE THEM WITH PRECISION NOT EVEN SEEN IN MODERN CONSTRUCTION EFFORTS (because of how insanely uneconomical, not to mention plain difficult these levels of precision are to achieve) - for one example of hundreds, you can’t fit a razor blade between the stones in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, and some of those are over 75 tons
I strongly recommend that documentary linked on Vimeo for a deep dive into megalithic architecture and the repeated patterns found across the world
That's goy thinking. If you thought you were building a monument for a living God, to the point where you hoped to be entombed with them, economics aren't a consideration.
We think in terms of efficiency and wasted effort. These people didn't. They had nothing to "entertain" them so all their time was either working or bored. They could literally have build ramps several miles long out of earth just to keep the slope low enough to roll these things up on logs.
We wouldn't do that because "there must be a better way". They just did it.
That’s great, and probably true to some extent - it’s still impossible for those civilizations to have achieved the level of precision they did with the technology we claim they had
They could literally have build ramps several miles long out of earth just to keep the slope low enough to roll these things up on logs.
No, they literally couldn’t have lol, certainly not without leaving any evidence
I reckon they may only have needed a very strong lever, strong ropes and a strong wheeled platform in order for a bunch of slaves to lift and move large rocks. I don't know what the official story is but I'm guessing it was something along those lines. A lever capable of lifting such large weights would be very heavy itself, but it could have been deconstructed for transport and assembled where it was needed, e.g. multiple stone columns that could be bound together. Strong ropes could also be made from many ropes wound together and many wheels under a platform would allow it to bear greater weights. What else would they need?
The “official” story behind these sites is that stones were either picked up off the ground in these shapes, then fitted together, with maybe some light polishing by pumice or other soft stones.
In some cases (Egypt) the official narrative is that these stones were “rough hewn” from a quarry (with copper tools that came from MICHIGAN ore deposits), then somehow (???) smoothed and shaped with a precision practically unheard of in even modern construction. All by a culture that had never invented the wheel, apparently.
Clearly, humanity has risen to extreme heights in the past that we have trouble imagining (and duplicating) today.
Best documentary I’ve ever seen on the holes in the mainstream story of the Pyramids and their worldwide significance
“prehistoric” Michigan Copper found in a Mediterranean shipwreck
What wiped them out? Probably the 26,000 year cyclical catastrophe:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F-d4zfovcog
Check out the Easter Island statues. They were apparently built, and quarried, by hand. It just takes something like 10 years to wear the stone down.
I know it's boring, but my theory here is that people back then realized that they had nothing better to do with their lives than seeking perfection of craft. That's it. Because of that, they'll spend an entire week making a single stone perfectly fit it's alotted space, rather than churning out 100 "good enough" blocks and having to mortar them all to hide the faults.
None of us think that way today. No one here would spend ten years kicking rocks into shape because, surely, that time could be better spent learning, or arguing, or making money, or sitting around. But, if you believed in something greater than yourself, really believed, you could build something like this.
First time I've heard of Michigan copper in the old world, looks like an interesting rabbit hole to explore. Transatlantic trade secrets being lost in the bronze age collapse is definitely very possible.
It is a really interesting rabbit hole - i first came across it in, iirc, Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods and it helped tie together a few things that seemed anomalous but disconnected, like the level of sophistication seen in prehistoric America (the Mound Builders, South American pyramids with surrounding populations plausibly in the millions despite having all but vanished into barbaric cannibalistic remnants by the time Europeans show up), the common building patterns (e.g. megaliths, PSM, and pyramids) showing up around the globe, and so on. Hell, it even ties together with the Book of Mormon of all things lol!
I don't know much about masonry, so can you explain why this level of precision is remarkable? We have ancient statues with much more precise shapes going back allegedly 6000 years, including hard materials like marble. This article includes an ancient illustration of how Egyptian sculptors did their work, appearing to use stones to chisel away: https://www.thecollector.com/classical-art-marble-sculpting/. That article says for hard materials they used the same material to sculpt it. Couldn't that be how it was done in architecture as well if not with metal tools?
Perhaps I should have added the word “megalithic” (aka massive stones) to the title, I went with “polygonal stone masonry” because the last time I posted about this someone mentioned that was one of the names which research in this subject went under (so it could be easily searched for and more results/details could be found)
These stones get up to literally hundreds of tons - many easily over a million pounds. The notion that pre-industrial societies, societies lacking THE WHEEL (i.e. ancient egypt, ancient celts, etc) could quarry these stones, much less move them, MUCH LESS LIFT AND PLACE THEM WITH PRECISION NOT EVEN SEEN IN MODERN CONSTRUCTION EFFORTS (because of how insanely uneconomical, not to mention plain difficult these levels of precision are to achieve) - for one example of hundreds, you can’t fit a razor blade between the stones in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, and some of those are over 75 tons
I strongly recommend that documentary linked on Vimeo for a deep dive into megalithic architecture and the repeated patterns found across the world
That's goy thinking. If you thought you were building a monument for a living God, to the point where you hoped to be entombed with them, economics aren't a consideration.
We think in terms of efficiency and wasted effort. These people didn't. They had nothing to "entertain" them so all their time was either working or bored. They could literally have build ramps several miles long out of earth just to keep the slope low enough to roll these things up on logs.
We wouldn't do that because "there must be a better way". They just did it.
That’s great, and probably true to some extent - it’s still impossible for those civilizations to have achieved the level of precision they did with the technology we claim they had
No, they literally couldn’t have lol, certainly not without leaving any evidence
I reckon they may only have needed a very strong lever, strong ropes and a strong wheeled platform in order for a bunch of slaves to lift and move large rocks. I don't know what the official story is but I'm guessing it was something along those lines. A lever capable of lifting such large weights would be very heavy itself, but it could have been deconstructed for transport and assembled where it was needed, e.g. multiple stone columns that could be bound together. Strong ropes could also be made from many ropes wound together and many wheels under a platform would allow it to bear greater weights. What else would they need?
You can’t do any of that stuff on desert sand and with a tech tree that doesn’t even include the wheel