Pre-Egypt Technology

I thought they had already found those internal ramps complete with larger chambers at the corners for turning. Though naturally not everyone is in agreement that that is what they were for!
 
AFAIR, there's *hints* on the scans. Snag is the notion flouts the established mythos, and it would really, really spoil umpteen Egyptologists' careers to be upstaged by an outsider...

IIRC, last time this happened was when that young American was 'allowed' to re-excavate and map some empty tombs in Valley of the Kings: Not only did he produce superb 3D models, but he stumbled upon extensive extra levels to one and, decades later, is still digging those out...

Uh, one off-beat possibility is such corner recesses is where they mounted huge timbers for craning blocks. The legendary 'Cedars of Lebanon' were up to 40 metres tall. Even trimmed, that's humungous...
 
You don't need aliens, y'all just need to read Graham Hancock's book 'Fingerprints of the Gods'. All will be explained. I promise! The fact that no-one on this thread appears to have read it, stuns me. It's easily available in most 2nd hand bookshops ...
 
I've seen a less than convincing documentary about Hancock's theories, so I'm aware he believes that there was an advanced human civilisation about 12000 years ago (if I remember correctly).

I can't say that I was much impressed.
 
Documentaries are TV sound bites, Ursa. Please read the book, then say the same. The original premise was endorsed by Albert Einstein, by the way ...
 
Every one has their off days.

To save me reading a whole pile of tosh, I'll quote a sentence from the Wiki article on Hancock:
One of the main themes running through many of his books is the possible global connection with a "mother culture" from which he believes all ancient historical civilizations sprang.
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You can tell me if this isn't really one of his ideas.

Frankly, this sort of things seems to be based on the premise that different people, in different cultures and at different times, cannot come up with similar cultural ideas** or independent solutions to similar problems. And if the solutions look similar, it may be because they're the most obvious solutions to that similar problem. We see this sort of thing all the time, today and in history -- Darwin and Wallace (evolution), Newton and Leibniz (calculus) -- where
similar developments can occur in parallel. But perhaps this piecemeal, distributed progress in knowledge is too untidy for some people and they have to find a neater solution?

Well, human development isn't going to be neat; it isn't like physics where it's possible that there may be elegant solutions. Humans just aren't like that. They use their brains to cope with the world in front of them (which includes carrying forward ongoing scientific and engineering investigations). They don't sit around waiting for the latest snippet of information from some imaginary store of ancient wisdom. (If they did, they wouldn't have got anywhere or achieved anything.[/rant]



** - The common factor is, of course, that they're all human beings and are very closely related to one another.
 
Uh, well. You can't winnem all. You wouldn't get past the 1st two pages if you thought it was going to be junk, but then again, you might keep reading? 'Nuff said ...
 
I'm with Ursa on this. I don't have the patience for these sort of ideas. I'm sorry but the idea that there was some human civilisation 10000+ years ago that left no trace of itself; no artifacts, no fossil records etc. it simply too ridiculous to waste time on. I know proponents of these sort of ideas claim that there are examples of cryptic remains that don't have an explanation as yet that "prove" their theories. However it seems very strange that such a prehostoric civilisation leaves almost nothing and every civilisation since has left masses of artifacts and ruins. Whilst there are still a couple of gaps - "missing links" - in our prehistory they are getting ever smaller as we discover new evidence and are simply not big enough to encompass a whole missing civilisation.

Incidentally, Ursa, evolution itself, of course, is an excellent example of what you describe; of how independent solutions to similar problems produce remarkably similar but unrelated mechanisms.
 
I've vague memories of reading Hancock a long time ago. I don't recall being convinced...

One problem, IIRC, was that he seemed to assume contemporary folk were utterly unable to do mega-stuff themselves...

This is essentially the same argument as the Apollo-deniers: It *must* have been faked because getting to the Moon is so difficult...

Tosh !! The British Interplanetary Society had a workable Moon-mission design in ~1938, using solid rockets, yet !! (After the first V2s fell, the design was quickly upgraded to liquid fuel ;-)) Okay, the chances of that project succeeding were 50/50 at best, but that was because they didn't know about the Van Allen belt etc etc...

Slightly OT: There was a parallel argument over exactly how Medieval master-masons got all that stone to the top of their many cathedrals. It was rather an anti-climax when some-one remembered there was a genuine Medieval tread-mill crane in one of the towers...
 
Vertigo said:
I'm with Ursa on this. I don't have the patience for these sort of ideas ...
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What ideas? How on earth can you know what his ideas are unless you read them? There is a party game where one person says something to someone else, who repeats it to someone else, etc. By the time it comes back to the origin, it's become so garbled it bears no resemblance?

And yes, he DOES have an explanation -- a very good explanation that has nothing to do with 'aliens' or mystic mumbo jumbo -- but which makes a lot of 'serious scientists' very uneasy.

Another thing: Wikipaedia isn't always reliable. A lot of people just skim it on Wiki and think they have what they need to know. But just because something's on Wiki doesn't make it true, it doesn't even have the information checks and balances of a decent Sunday newspaper.

Sorry ...
 
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Humans are pretty ingenious creature ; once we set our minds to something - however seemingly impossible - it's amazing how often we are capable of achieving it.

The other thing is that back then time wasn't so much of an issue ; for a cathedral to be built in the designer's lifetime wasn't expected or planned. It was widely expected that with the most momentous of scructures that,given the limited manpower available, they would take as long as they would take. The same was not true in ancient Egypt however , where the available workforce was much larger.

The main purpose in the lifes of most ordinary Egyptians was that of agriculture and ensuring that the harvest was successful. Carrying out the will of the Paharoah (and by association the gods) and thus ensuring the success of the harvest - involved not only irrigation but also pleasing their Pharaoh ; building structures such as the Pyramids , Sphinx etc was an integral part of the agricultural process.
 
That is all quite true, Marvin. And humans ARE amazingly inventive. However, things remain that cannot easily be explained.

Take this one, for instance: the speed of drilling on the granite in the King's Chamber (ie: the rate that the drill spirals downward) is greater than any drill today is capable of -- or if they can now do it, the technique is very recent indeed. (I stand correction?) Granite is a HARD stone and they drilled it in seconds.

There's also the question of 200 ton stone blocks in Peru,that even the most modern lifting equipment would struggle with -- transported from quarries hundreds of miles away and plonked on top of mountains that are even today accessible only by arduous travel, like child's toys, thousands of them, and slotted together in zig-zag shapes, perfectly flat and level etc.

I will labour the point no further, but Hancock DOES explain it -- without 'aliens' ...
 
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It's still a hot topic! Some guy just posted a wind-power solution. Big rotating wooden poles with wings/props at the top, hauling stone blocks down a runway on wooden rollers. It would probably work.
Personally, the lazy approach seems most likely here. Think of the Nile, and the amount of mud and limestone dust. Those blocks are joined seamlessly and the sides are dead flat. That would take weeks of chipping. Apparently limestone blocks harden in hours, and do not further expand or shrink. It's gotta be, too easy to pour them in minutes instead of carving for days. It was enough work to get the big granite blocks up there and tune up the chambers.
Chemicals were coming in, there's salt deposits, and Gypsum. The small shafts were built deliberately at the same time as the pyramid, so they are channels for something to pour in there, one theory says Hydrochloric acid and Zinc Oxide. I'm no chemist.
The spiral staircase looks good too. There seemed to be something about 16 feet, they could hoist blocks up that far no prob.
What else? Oh yea, the age. Well, if it can be proven the Pyramid was partly submerged, then perhaps it was pre-flood. But when was that?
It's these pre-cataclysm cities that are drawing the nutty theories. However, they did exist, and some are awe inspiring. The one off Japan is a mystery, though they aren't even sure if it's natural or man-made.
This is all leading up to more accurately dating the disaster that struck the earth. It must have been a doozy to dump whole cities into the ocean, it's no wonder early history was eradicated.
If Egypt isn't 10,000 yrs. old, it may well be built on top of a civilization that was.
And that's when the giant people lived! Woo! Woo!
The granite carving IS amazing. What about that huge unfinished one. They can't figure it. Maybe it was so long ago that rocks were softer. )
 
Yah, that's so true -- the looney fringe take over with their giants and stuff, and make people like Gerald Hancock or Buzz Aldrin look ridiculous, to people who have not studied the original stuff but just skim the web. (That observation is NOT directed at anyone in this thread. I have great respect for all.) But Riff, there is a BIG difference between cutting limestone, which is a very soft rock (Mohs hardness 3 on scale of 10) and cutting granite -- which is a mixture of feldspar and quartz (Mohs 6 and 7 respectively) with a bit of mica and some other stuff thrown in.
 
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OK I have just read all of chapter 45 from his book on the official Gerald Hancock site (www.grahamhancock.com).

In the first part of this chapter he talks a lot about the age of a buried building suggesting it is older than the current accepted thoughts. I have no problem with that and it would be no great surprise and also no great mystery.

In the latter half of the chapter he is talking about the buried solar barges near Abydos. I note that he never gives them the accepted title of solar barges. He compares these to the "140 foot ocean-going vessel" at Giza. Now this is where his stuff starts to fall down. I have never seen any other description of this boat as "ocean-going". It is only 143 feet long and that's really not very big, it has a flat bottom with no keel, and very low sides (see a picture here File:Gizeh Sonnenbarke BW 2.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and yes that is Wiki but I have been there and that is an accurate picture). If you would like to try an "ocean-going" trip in that boat, please be my guest. This boat unlike almost all other solar-barges (including the Abydos ones and numerous others found (but not dispalyed) at Giza, which Hancock declines to comment on) does show signs that it has actually been in the water at some time and was probably used as a funerary barge on the Nile. Most have purely ritual use and show no sign of ever having been in the water, which is why it is not a problem, as Hancock seems to think it is, that the Abydos boats are so far from the Nile.

He cites all this as evidence of an ocean-going civilisation that pre-dates the Egyptian civilisation. I have to say that is one massive great leap of faith based on decidedly shaky evidence, which does not lead me to thinking I want to spend my money on this book.

Sorry...
 
RJM Corbet said:
What ideas? How on earth can you know what his ideas are unless you read them?
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Why should I care what his ideas are if he can't persuade a serious number of others in his field. I watched the programme that he made (i.e. not one about him, written by someone else) and simply wasn't convinced. Time is too short to read a lot of old tosh. If persuasive evidence does arise - and I haven't seen any backing his theories - I'll take more notice.
RJM Corbet said:
There is a party game where one person says something to someone else, who repeats it to someone else, etc. By the time it comes back to the origin, it's become so garbled it bears no resemblance?
Click to expand...
There's also the joke where the message, "Send reinforcements; we're going to advance" is, through the process you've mentioned, transformed into "Send three and fourpence; we're going to a dance." I'm not sure of its relevance to this discussion, though; the only material I've seen about Hancock's work was presented by the man himself.

RJM Corbet said:
And yes, he DOES have an explanation -- a very good explanation that has nothing to do with 'aliens' or mystic mumbo jumbo -- but which makes a lot of 'serious scientists' very uneasy.
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I get uneasy when someone (in this case, Hancock) builds a whole edifice on top of not much evidence (or, in this case, none) and then expects the world to take any notice.

RJM Corbet said:
Another thing: Wikipaedia isn't always reliable. A lot of people just skim it on Wiki and think they have what they need to know. But just because something's on Wiki doesn't make it true, it doesn't even have the information checks and balances of a decent Sunday newspaper.
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I quoted one sentence from Wiki, about Hancock's ideas, and asked if the article was misrepresenting them. Given that no-one has said that it was, I can only assume the sentence was giving the true picture.

RJM Corbet said:
That is all quite true, Marvin. And humans ARE amazingly inventive. However, things remain that cannot easily be explained.

Take this one, for instance: the speed of drilling on the granite in the King's Chamber (ie: the rate that the drill spirals downward) is greater than any drill today is capable of -- or if they can now do it, the technique is very recent indeed. (I stand correction?) Granite is a HARD stone and they drilled it in seconds.
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Do we know really how fast the holes were drilled? I'm going to stick my neck out and say that no-one has any proof that they were "drilled in seconds". But even supposing the ancient Egyptians could do what we probably can't, so what? All that shows is that someone, in the past, was very clever in devising the technique. It doesn't say when they devised it other than it can't have been after they used it. (And really, saying that an Ancient Egyptian was in no position to develop the technique doesn't really persuade me that if we trek back another 8000 years into the past, we'll find someone who could. Frankly, that's just a silly line of argument. Sorry: it isn't an argument of any sort; except, maybe, bogus.)

RJM Corbet said:
There's also the question of 200 ton stone blocks in Peru,that even the most modern lifting equipment would struggle with -- transported from quarries hundreds of miles away and plonked on top of mountains that are even today accessible only by arduous travel, like child's toys, thousands of them, and slotted together in zig-zag shapes, perfectly flat and level etc.

I will labour the point no further, but Hancock DOES explain it -- without 'aliens' ...
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The point isn't whether aliens were involved or not - they weren't - it's the topsy-turvy view that if someone 4000 years ago (or only 1500 years ago in the case of the Peruvian stuff) couldn't be expected to know how to do something (because, somehow, people then were more stupid than us, despite all the evidence to the contrary), we have to invent a more advanced and far earlier civilisation. (And it must have been very advanced: it managed to remove just about every scrap of evidence that it existed before withdrawing from public view.)
 
Ursa, didn't Gallileo have the same sort of problem with the establishment of his time? (Yes, I understand you're talking about scientific peers, not churchmen.)

Vertigo: thank you for at least reading chapter 45. I'm being sincere. I wish though that you had read Chapter One, where he describes an accurate map of the Continent of Antartica, as it was before covered by the southern polar icecap? Which only modern sonar techniques have verified as accurate? Which scientists have studied, and which Albert Einstein endorsed? Thank you also for the site link. :)

Never mind, y'all. Poor old G. Hancock. I understand his frustration. But let's leave it there? These discussions aren't meant to become too heated. Certainly no reflection upon anyone's intelligence was meant, and I apologise if that impression was created ...
 
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When polar ice covers a sea, there's no effect on sea level, because ice floats: the extra volume of the ice over the equivalent volume of liquid water is raised above sea level.

However, when ice is on land (as in Greenland, Antarctica, various other arctic islands and in non-Arctic glaciers) none of it adds to the volume of the world's oceans. If that ice melts, and makes its way to the coast, the sea level rises. (This is one of the reasons why global warming - whether man-made or not, or called climate change - could be disastrous: much of the world's population - including me - lives not far above sea level.)

Now from what I recall of Mr Hancock's TV programme, it showed underwater structures that were meant to be the remains of ancient cities. If Antarctica was ice-free** (and to be fair, I don't recall him mentioning that continent in his programme), those cities would have been far deeper in the ocean than they are now.




** - By the way, the last ice age ended around 8000BCE, about 2000 years closer to our time than the civilisation Hancock was referring to in his programme (assuming my memory is not playing tricks on me).
 
Just because we don't know how something was done , it doesnt mean that we should assume aliens/super-intelligent beings were responsible. In many ways our ancestors WERE superior to us ; they were better with their hands and undoubtedly in better shape physically for the job at hand. As I mentioned humans are inventive , but they also adapt very well to their surroundings. The problems man faced millenia ago are not those we face today , and so there are many things that have been forgotten , and we have lost or changed many abilities - physical and mental.

For example , if we suddenly lost the ability to generate energy then who would stand a better chance of survival - a human today or a human from 200-2000 years ago? Most people wouldnt even have a clue as to how to produce their own food , or even light a fire. Undoubtedly most would just sit around waiting for someone else to do it for them.

What I'm basically trying to say is that we cannot judge what was possible by man then by today's standards ; we have to judge him on his own merits.
 
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