Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
|
|
i remember that study too--explains the tight joints in the simpler walls, but doesn't explain these very flat surfaces and the grooves cut straight at uniform depth. the quest to demythologize this stuff should be focusing on a search for tools. the artifact is a clue to the tool. pretty impressive artifacts.
|
|
cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
|
|
Er... hammers and chisels. They also had metal alloys, according to one or another of the sites listed earlier. This was a sophisticated civilization for the time and place, obviously. But to shortchange them by imagining that they had to have help from wayfaring aliens is still just plain denigrating to them, and by extension, ourselves.
|
|
Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
|
|
hammers and chisels were used extensively in the "old world", and i don't think you find the clean lines that these photos show. i'm not an expert on it, but it's my impression from having been to a few museums and also having done extensive woodwork and a bit of stonework myself.
when your work is limited to hammer and chisel, you're not motivated to produce this sort of apparent perfection. you can do it with motivation and patience, but you'd have to have the vision for it, and the history of technology shows that vision and tool development go hand-in-hand.
that long, straight groove, especially, makes me think of one tool: a mounted router. yes, you could produce it with chisels and abrasives, given unlimited time and patience. but what would the point have been? the chisels would keep wearing down, giving you variable widths, which you'd then have to compensate with troublesome straight-edge abrading, taking care to line it all up.
i often do work without fancy tools in order to imitate the job done conveniently by fancy tools. at a certain point, i start compromising, or just tell myself, "why bother?"
one of the links here tells that these structures were torn down by the spanish, with some of the material going into local churches. but there ought to be quarry sites, and they would tell a lot about how the work was done.
|
|
graniteclimber
Trad climber
The Illuminati
|
|
It is impressive, but is it more impressive then this?
The implicit prejudices behind attributing the site to aliens is that the people who built it where savages incapable of the achievement without extraterrestrial help. The people who believe this do not think the same of the Colosseum or the cathedrals--those were built by whites.
|
|
dirtbag
climber
|
|
I see ghosts in that image, ghosts! Ghosts did it!
|
|
brotherbbock
Trad climber
Alta Loma, CA
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 9, 2010 - 05:23pm PT
|
Yes I do think Puma Punku is more impressive.
The precise fit of the blocks is not even a comparison.
Graniteclimber being white has nothing to do with it. Unless you are talking about white aliens.
|
|
graniteclimber
Trad climber
The Illuminati
|
|
Yes I do think Puma Punku is more impressive.
The precise fit of the blocks is not even a comparison.
If the precise fit of the blocks is all that you care about, then Puma Punku is more impressive. Of course, if you develop a strong and durable mortar, you don't need such a precise fit. But the mud mortar that they had was not up to the job.
|
|
monolith
climber
Berkeley, CA
|
|
Reilly's #5 pic blows my mind.
Two tongue and groove pairs, offset. I'm assuming they went the full length of the block. The mechanics of keeping them precise over that length on two blocks is amazing, even assuming metal alloy tools.
The tongue is not just a stump either. It's fairly wide and thin. Wouldn't the tongue be fragile? Transporting and fitting could snap it.
The #6 pic not as impressive where their appears to be grooves opposite each other with something inserted between them. But if full length still requires precision.
|
|
graniteclimber
Trad climber
The Illuminati
|
|
The #6 pic not as impressive where their appears to be grooves opposite each other with something inserted between them.
Metal I-clamps made of a special copper-arsenic-nickel bronze alloy. Much harder and more durable than typical copper alloys.
|
|
neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
|
|
hey there all, say, seeing that there seems to have been an awful lot more of these "strange situation type post" here, i thought i'd for once (or twice?, not sure) jump in and add a simple note:
folks nowadays are so used to tv, modernday jobs, and being so very busy with so many modernday things, that they never have time to make a cardboard cut-out, let alone unique pottery near the likes-of never seen by others, or intricate basketry, handmade intricate lace tablecloths, old-time chinese silk, or whatever... or--even stonemanship, vast huge stuff, or dainty tiny carved gems... ;)
they forget that folks long-time-back, had days-upon-days upon-days, of having: TIME...
time: a palatte of sorts, without limit...
their "time" agenda was not modernday time agendas...
stuff did not HAVE to made before the 5:00 card-punch time...
before the end of the work-week... or before the year, and income tax accounts...
everything folks did, as to anything, "continued on" daily as a way
of life, and many, depending on what was made, NEVER saw the end results...
one gets very well skilled in just "living and doing", and then dying after "passing the skill" on the next-in-line, and they inturn, to the next-in-line... and onward the ol' ball of life rolls...
folks now-a-days cannot compredhend life "back then"... it is too
"strange"... :O doesnt seem "buisness productive, either... :O
there were whole families that set-their-face to their craft, perfecting their skills and perhaps even "family trade secrets" so as to have others seek out their work...
*and too, yes, i know there was slave work, as well, in some cases, depending on what was built, as folks have mentioned--they were thus being pulled into various crafts, to have the needed manpower (instead of the modernday machinery, in modernday cases)...
so it is, modern times can only see fast "this" and fast "that"...
folks that lived, just to live:
had whole life-times to build things, and
in a sense, their very LIFE ESSENSE has been poured into the work they did... or--in otherwords, they "lived" to do this, as their hearts inspired them, pushed them, or whatever (again, depending on cultures, etc)... they set to make extentions of their world around them... and with whatever was "on hand"--not running out to the craft-stores for "preformed make it overnight" stuff, or harddware stores for tools that they used their own "blood, sweat, and tears" as a majoring power-source for...
kind of for example:
if someone from the "past" could step-up see a jet airplane, or phones and computers and such, how would they have ever believed that MAN, same as them, had devised such "inconcievable things"? it would not seem possible... yet--somehow, "things" were "devise" "designe" "found" or "whatever" to have MADE these "strange" things... :O
yet, as day-passes-into-night, life-times led to such...
even as their life-times led to things that we never walked through, or lived through... surely man was "made" as a very unique "critter"!
when seeing even the most not-understood of "made things", it seems a very simple process of "an overlooked source" HAS taken place, one of:
one day at a time... from dawn to dusk,
man, just being man, following inspirations from the heart...
oh my...
well, i reckon i took an awful long time, to state something simple...
it must be that ol' complex-nature of man:
seeking to "create" even as to "thoughts" becomeing words, as well as,
"thoughts" becoming "things"... :)
oh well, sure hope this adds a bit of fun here for you all...
i just had to throw a "monkey wrench" in, i reckon...
carry on... have fun... i got to use my "creativity" today... :))
god bless...
:)
|
|
Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
|
|
probably should mention that the smelting of metals was unknown in the precolumbian americas, therefore no iron age, no iron tools. stone would've been worked with tools made of harder stone.
the baroque cathedral, the roman coliseum are cases in point: lots of detail that would've been worked with hand tools. one of the great aesthetic strategies of such florid detail is to catch the eye so it doesn't notice the imperfections. the ancient greeks did it a lot. the relatively clean lines of these new world sites, by contrast, are a very modern style.
|
|
cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
|
|
Bronze tools are plenty hard enough to carve sandstone.
|
|
Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
|
|
|
Nov 10, 2010 - 01:10am PT
|
i think neebee's point is well-taken--the ancients were quite goal-oriented and not on a 40-hour work week. it's thought that the great monuments of egypt were built in a sort of public enthusiasm, and not by slave labor.
it appears that the tools for stonework are pretty sparse in old world archaeology as well. they can only surmise how things were done. there are saw scars in some of the quarries, and the immensity of the pyramid blocks suggests long, circular band saws. bronze would've been the metal. perhaps abrasives were employed.
|
|
Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
|
|
|
Nov 10, 2010 - 10:44am PT
|
this has proven a bit of an eye-opener. the block architecture makes use of I-shaped connectors, not sure if they were poured in place or hammered, using an alloy of bronze. bronze is copper and tin, they added arsenic and nickel. the stone used was a red sandstone quarried 10 km away, across lake titicaca. fancywork used a harder andesite taken 90 km distant. big blocks. no familiar ropes, apparently, and probably no logs to roll them on. it's been suggested that llama skins were used.
klimmer and brotherbock wouldn't be the first to make suggestions outside the box:
A story told by the local Aymara indians to a Spanish traveller who visited Tiahuanaco shortly after the conquest spoke of the city's original foundation in the age of Chamac Pacha, or First Creation, long before the coming of the Incas. Its earliest inhabitants, they said, possessed supernatural powers, for which they were able miraculously to lift stones of off the ground, which "...were carried [from the mountain quarries] through the air to the sound of a trumpet".
interesting treatment of the stone technology here by a couple california archaeologists:
http://www.michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/Who%20Taught%20the%20Inca%20Stonemasons%20Their%20Skills%20A%20Comparison%20of%20Tiahuanaco%20and%20Inca%20Cut-Stone%20Masonry.pdf
|
|
graniteclimber
Trad climber
The Illuminati
|
|
|
Nov 10, 2010 - 11:29am PT
|
probably should mention that the smelting of metals was unknown in the precolumbian americas, ... stone would've been worked with tools made of harder stone.
You have already discovered that this is wrong and that they had metal tools, if your post above is any indication.
|
|
Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
|
|
|
Nov 10, 2010 - 11:40am PT
|
true indeed, granite. unlike yourself, i wasn't born knowing everything.
the lit seems to indicate that bronze can be used, but it isn't easy, and it does wear quickly. flintlike rocks are probably preferred, at least for dealing with soft sandstone. the greeks were able to impregnate bronze with native carborundum to make rather effective stone files, but such deposits are rare. try working a little stone yourself sometime. and moving a 100-ton stone block a few miles with, say, 500 laborers and not much else. that link to the academic article draws the best conclusion: we just don't know how it was done.
another interesting link:
http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/extremasonry.htm#large%20stones
... which suggests that the egyptians and others in the ancient middle east set gemstones, such as sapphires, rubies and even diamonds, into the bronze. the quarrying of large blocks of granite near aswan employed small balls of dolerite, a rock harder than granite. carborundum, emery also mentioned as possibilities. a sophisticated "stone age". there are examples of core drill samples from ancient egypt.
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Nov 10, 2010 - 11:55am PT
|
When I was in grad school one of the high energy physicists, Klaus Jaeger as I remember, had been
trained to be a machinest in Germany. In their final exam the students were given a cube of steel
and a hand file. They were expected to return a sphere perfect to within a mil or so. I imagine those
who returned spheres with the largest diameters
got A's.
|
|
brotherbbock
Trad climber
Alta Loma, CA
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 10, 2010 - 01:50pm PT
|
From Tony's link:
One of the most interesting things to have transpired about the site is that many of the immense blocks were built as if from a template, and amazingly appear to interlock as the picture below illustrates. Such a discovery flies directly in the face of all our concepts of the construction skills of the ancients. With no previous examples of masonry at such a sophisticated level, nor on such great scale leaves one to wonder at the confidence and skills of the designers and masons.
I agree with neebee that time does play a factor in constructing something so precise. But as noted above, regardless of time involved in the endeavor, we are dealing with something that has no comparison and is for the most part unexplainable as of now.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Nov 10, 2010 - 02:06pm PT
|
There is a subtle science.
It has been long lost in this age of Kali because this age of hypocrisy and quarrel has been taken over by the dull hollow soul-less destuctive gross materialists and their very limited manufactured machines.
This subtle science involves mantras along with the material elements that can enable the material energies to be manipulated extremely precise with unequaled beauty.
Stupid modern gross materialistic science is pure cave man technology unknowingly disguised as "advanced".
The fools are going completely backwards unknowingly ....
|
|
Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
|
|
|
Nov 10, 2010 - 02:07pm PT
|
Sandstone hardness:
Hardness 6.5 to 7 on Moh's Scale (http://www.mineralszone.com/stones/sandstone.html);
Moh 3- calcite, copper, arsenic, antimony, thorium, dentin
alloyed copper is only gonna get you to about 3.5 Moh so you're gonna
be really busy sharpening your bronze chisels! I know how hard I have to
work to keep my r60 chisels* sharp and they only see wood (except fot the
one that 'saw' concrete the other day).
* r60 steel is about 7.5-8.0 Moh
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!