4 ms·

I mean, the perfect seams of the joints in various Peruvian ruins, the melted rock formations, the unexplained techniques for constructing massive stone structu

I mean, the perfect seams of the joints in various Peruvian ruins, the melted rock formations, the unexplained techniques for constructing massive stone structures .. I think there is definitely a case to be made for previous, advanced civilisations, which we haven't quite yet understood properly. But then again I could just be a victim of the Gaia spam and Grahama Hancock interviews on JRE ..

hellofunk 6y ago
Ha, I was thinking, a victim of the ancient aliens series on TV. We do have a lot to think about in the past and it seems to be filtered through a very narrow modern view.
WalterBright 6y ago
> the perfect seams of the joints in various Peruvian ruins I remember the 1970s, when people concluded that the seams were so perfect they must have been done with alien technology. Then an archaeologist showed how to make such a joint in about 30 minutes by banging a couple rocks together.
- RikNieu 6y ago
  That sounds interesting, do you have a link? But then again, how do you "bang" 20-50 ton rocks together?
  - fit2rule 6y ago
    Yeah, that's a bit glib. A lot of the joints and seams technology in Peruvian ruins is unexplainable - even with modern industrial processes, we would be very hard pressed to replicate the results of some of these structures. Like it'd be very, very hard to do it as well as the ancients did, even with our crazy construction technology...
    - brutt 6y ago
      It's concrete.
      - naasking 6y ago
        That doesn't solve the problem. Concrete forms in a mold. Now you have to explain how the mold was made so flat.
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        Bang, er, well, grind three rocks together. http://precisiongranitecn.com/info/how-to-make-granite-surface-plate-22832971.html http://precisiongranitecn.com/info/how-to-make-granite-surfa...
        ncmncm 6y ago
        So, they made a unique, precision rock mold, exactly one for each unique, poured-concrete megalith, and then... turned the mold into more concrete, and poured that into another unique, laboriously constructed rock mold? Color me not satisfied with this picture.
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        I'm not saying that's what the Inca did. But it's how you arrive at a microscopically flat surface plate.
        brutt 6y ago
        Why rock? Mold can be made from wood, animal skin, clay, or just dug hole in earth.
        brutt 6y ago
        Mold is made from animal skin (waterproof) and wood, then block is cast in place. Skin degraded with time, so nothing left between blocks. It's easy to notice bumps on blocks where animal legs were.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Pretty simple. First you pick two rocks that have nearly the right shape (its obvious they did that, because each joint is clearly custom). You put some dust on one surface. Take the mating surface, and rub it a bit on that dust. That will reveal the high spots. Take a smaller rock and bang on the high spots to grind them down a bit. Repeat the process until no more high spots. It's not dissimilar to how telescope mirrors are ground to perfection, and how to make a perfectly flat steel surface.
    - ncmncm 6y ago
      Doesn't explain the entire lack of tool marks, though. Or the lack of embedded shells. I am curious about the perfectly flat, right-angled interiors of the 50+-ton (always empty!) basalt boxes in Egyptian mausoleums. We have a plausible story about cutting the outsides using copper saw blades with gems embedded in the edge, but no similar one for the insides, particularly the inside corners. We also need to understand why the tech for working the biggest rocks was lost before the Inka took up building. The late work always uses much smaller rocks, and is relatively crude.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        > Doesn't explain the entire lack of tool marks, though. Because they didn't use tools. I've watched telescope mirrors ground to incredible precision by hand, no tools. > Or the lack of embedded shells. Use rocks without embedded shells. > inside corners Use drills, clean up with files or blocking. Remember the Pharaohs had essentially infinite resources to do that for one box. He would have used the best masons, paid them well, and gave them the time they needed. > why the tech for working the biggest rocks was lost We can't know why, but the most plausible explanation is one that accounts for lost technology everywhere. People didn't have writing or didn't bother to write it down or lost the books.
        ncmncm 6y ago
        >> Doesn't explain the entire lack of tool marks, though. > Because they didn't use tools. I've watched telescope mirrors ground to incredible precision by hand, no tools. Good one. That doesn't work on non-convex polygonal shapes. Notably, the faces are not just identically curved, as one would get by interfering faces. They are both flat. >> Or the lack of embedded shells. > Use rocks without embedded shells. The rock faces in the quarries have embedded shells. Only the cut faces of rocks from those quarries lack them. >> inside corners > Use drills, clean up with files or blocking. Remember the Pharaohs had essentially infinite resources to do that for one box. He would have used the best masons, paid them well, and gave them the time they needed. Infinite labor doesn't help in a box. Only one or two masons would fit. We know what their rock drills were like; they had a minimum radius measured in inches. And, again, no tool marks. You don't get to define out the unknown by inventing excuses to ignore it; that is the same as inventing aliens. It takes actual work.
- fit2rule 6y ago
  The jury is still out. A lot of these studies were re-assessed and found to be quite faulty - i.e. you cannot bang two rocks together and get a perfectly flat surface with <0.005mm deviation in flatness. Also, there is a lot of unexplained melted rock all over Peru and Ecuador and so on. Somebody in the ancient world either had a light sabre, or .. it was aliens.
  - brutt 6y ago
    It's concrete.
- KakArvid 6y ago
  Reminds me of a story I stumbled across a long time ago (at least as measured by internet time) about a guy in Michigan that figured out a method to build Stonehenge with a small crew and simple tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRRDzFROMx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRRDzFROMx0
  - fit2rule 6y ago
    Yeah, sure, we could build Stonehenge today, but Stonehenge is not really representative of the monolithic cultural artefacts we couldn't easily build today, and Stonehenge, while popular in the Anglosphere, is not nearly as fascinating from the monolithic perspective as Baalbek and Sacsayhuamán and Gobekli Tepe .. These all have things we need to look into, before we make big leaping conclusions about how primitive other cultures were and how things proceeded to the superlatives of modernity. I'm prepared to learn that the rock cultures used hand tools and it was all just a lot of back breaking labor, but I also would not be surprised to learn that a laser-cutting device was discovered in a temple somewhere, and which 'explains everything' without any hand waving alien haircuts - albeit opening too many doors.
goto11 6y ago
> I mean, the perfect seams of the joints in various Peruvian ruins Er... the peruvians was an advanced civilization. Certainly advanced enough to fit stones snugly. That we don't know the exact techniques used for various ancient buildings does not mean they couldn't have built it. In any case saying "maybe someone else did it" explains absolutely nothing. You just have a new hypothesis with zero evidence.

hellofunk 6y ago

Ha, I was thinking, a victim of the ancient aliens series on TV. We do have a lot to think about in the past and it seems to be filtered through a very narrow modern view.

WalterBright 6y ago

> the perfect seams of the joints in various Peruvian ruins I remember the 1970s, when people concluded that the seams were so perfect they must have been done with alien technology. Then an archaeologist showed how to make such a joint in about 30 minutes by banging a couple rocks together.

RikNieu 6y ago
That sounds interesting, do you have a link? But then again, how do you "bang" 20-50 ton rocks together?
- fit2rule 6y ago
  Yeah, that's a bit glib. A lot of the joints and seams technology in Peruvian ruins is unexplainable - even with modern industrial processes, we would be very hard pressed to replicate the results of some of these structures. Like it'd be very, very hard to do it as well as the ancients did, even with our crazy construction technology...
  - brutt 6y ago
    It's concrete.
    - naasking 6y ago
      That doesn't solve the problem. Concrete forms in a mold. Now you have to explain how the mold was made so flat.
      - dredmorbius 6y ago
        Bang, er, well, grind three rocks together. http://precisiongranitecn.com/info/how-to-make-granite-surface-plate-22832971.html http://precisiongranitecn.com/info/how-to-make-granite-surfa...
        ncmncm 6y ago
        So, they made a unique, precision rock mold, exactly one for each unique, poured-concrete megalith, and then... turned the mold into more concrete, and poured that into another unique, laboriously constructed rock mold? Color me not satisfied with this picture.
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        I'm not saying that's what the Inca did. But it's how you arrive at a microscopically flat surface plate.
        brutt 6y ago
        Why rock? Mold can be made from wood, animal skin, clay, or just dug hole in earth.
      - brutt 6y ago
        Mold is made from animal skin (waterproof) and wood, then block is cast in place. Skin degraded with time, so nothing left between blocks. It's easy to notice bumps on blocks where animal legs were.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Pretty simple. First you pick two rocks that have nearly the right shape (its obvious they did that, because each joint is clearly custom). You put some dust on one surface. Take the mating surface, and rub it a bit on that dust. That will reveal the high spots. Take a smaller rock and bang on the high spots to grind them down a bit. Repeat the process until no more high spots. It's not dissimilar to how telescope mirrors are ground to perfection, and how to make a perfectly flat steel surface.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    Doesn't explain the entire lack of tool marks, though. Or the lack of embedded shells. I am curious about the perfectly flat, right-angled interiors of the 50+-ton (always empty!) basalt boxes in Egyptian mausoleums. We have a plausible story about cutting the outsides using copper saw blades with gems embedded in the edge, but no similar one for the insides, particularly the inside corners. We also need to understand why the tech for working the biggest rocks was lost before the Inka took up building. The late work always uses much smaller rocks, and is relatively crude.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      > Doesn't explain the entire lack of tool marks, though. Because they didn't use tools. I've watched telescope mirrors ground to incredible precision by hand, no tools. > Or the lack of embedded shells. Use rocks without embedded shells. > inside corners Use drills, clean up with files or blocking. Remember the Pharaohs had essentially infinite resources to do that for one box. He would have used the best masons, paid them well, and gave them the time they needed. > why the tech for working the biggest rocks was lost We can't know why, but the most plausible explanation is one that accounts for lost technology everywhere. People didn't have writing or didn't bother to write it down or lost the books.
      - ncmncm 6y ago
        >> Doesn't explain the entire lack of tool marks, though. > Because they didn't use tools. I've watched telescope mirrors ground to incredible precision by hand, no tools. Good one. That doesn't work on non-convex polygonal shapes. Notably, the faces are not just identically curved, as one would get by interfering faces. They are both flat. >> Or the lack of embedded shells. > Use rocks without embedded shells. The rock faces in the quarries have embedded shells. Only the cut faces of rocks from those quarries lack them. >> inside corners > Use drills, clean up with files or blocking. Remember the Pharaohs had essentially infinite resources to do that for one box. He would have used the best masons, paid them well, and gave them the time they needed. Infinite labor doesn't help in a box. Only one or two masons would fit. We know what their rock drills were like; they had a minimum radius measured in inches. And, again, no tool marks. You don't get to define out the unknown by inventing excuses to ignore it; that is the same as inventing aliens. It takes actual work.
fit2rule 6y ago
The jury is still out. A lot of these studies were re-assessed and found to be quite faulty - i.e. you cannot bang two rocks together and get a perfectly flat surface with <0.005mm deviation in flatness. Also, there is a lot of unexplained melted rock all over Peru and Ecuador and so on. Somebody in the ancient world either had a light sabre, or .. it was aliens.
- brutt 6y ago
  It's concrete.
KakArvid 6y ago
Reminds me of a story I stumbled across a long time ago (at least as measured by internet time) about a guy in Michigan that figured out a method to build Stonehenge with a small crew and simple tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRRDzFROMx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRRDzFROMx0
- fit2rule 6y ago
  Yeah, sure, we could build Stonehenge today, but Stonehenge is not really representative of the monolithic cultural artefacts we couldn't easily build today, and Stonehenge, while popular in the Anglosphere, is not nearly as fascinating from the monolithic perspective as Baalbek and Sacsayhuamán and Gobekli Tepe .. These all have things we need to look into, before we make big leaping conclusions about how primitive other cultures were and how things proceeded to the superlatives of modernity. I'm prepared to learn that the rock cultures used hand tools and it was all just a lot of back breaking labor, but I also would not be surprised to learn that a laser-cutting device was discovered in a temple somewhere, and which 'explains everything' without any hand waving alien haircuts - albeit opening too many doors.

goto11 6y ago

> I mean, the perfect seams of the joints in various Peruvian ruins Er... the peruvians was an advanced civilization. Certainly advanced enough to fit stones snugly. That we don't know the exact techniques used for various ancient buildings does not mean they couldn't have built it. In any case saying "maybe someone else did it" explains absolutely nothing. You just have a new hypothesis with zero evidence.