Ancient Machinery

This morning I was listening to Coast to Coast on satellite radio. They were discussing ancient machinery and advanced machinery which had been dated to ~3000 BC. Any thoughts? Following the link leads to the pictures of these items.

www.coasttocoastam.com...

[edit on 20-5-2005 by ferretman]

Unless all of this is fake, it's almost scary. I knew about the pillar of non-rusting iron, but that giant machine is something.

Do you have any info on that particular piece?

I only heard about it this morning and I went to the site......the one item looks like a Darpa Stone. From what was stated during the show, numerous machines have been found and immediately reburied and of course it seems that all the machines are buried on Government property.

Anyone else with any info?

non rusting iron um stainless steel no.. i think the non rusting iron pillar is just not true

but the rest of it just could be old bottle caps and people who lost there keys

Originally posted by lepracornman
non rusting iron um stainless steel no.. i think the non rusting iron pillar is just not true

Actually, if anything is true, this would be it. I read about it a long time ago.

It's not modern stainless steel. It's just very pure iron, which doesn't rust.

stainless steel is graded in its non rusting qualitys by its tin content......hence the more tin..less chance to rust and higher quality.

if your testing stainless steel in a laymans terms way simply touch it with a magnet...if you feel the slightest grip of magnetism its poor quality.

the 'non' rusting pole obviously contains a high tin content.......the other stuff?....yeah..thats pretty neat!

regards...good find.

and give a girl a dollar for me!

Some really great pics in there! Take a look. Personally I think the two 1,500 ton blocks two stories in the air is really cool. It's possible to move that big slabs, but the logistics are amazing.

The ancient 3d map is a fake (actually, it's a piece of limonite or mudstone -- natural sedimentary stone -- that formed as the seas dried up in that area (explaining the embedded fossil)). I think a better term than "fake" is "badly misinterpreted rock formation."

Lens is probably true (not sure of the age) -- it requires simple rock polishing techniques, which they had by then and before. Polished stone beads can be dated back to 3,000 BC and earlier.

Non-rusting iron is actually true, but not all that mysterious (we know why it doesn't rust and how it was produced. Aliens are not involved.)

Aluminum belt is not impossible; only very expensive. In the 1700's, aluminum was more costly than platinum.

Electrically charged disk... I have my doubts. How do they know it's electrically charged? A charge doesn't hold that long.

Flying vehicle -- no. Misinterpretation of real artifacts.

Giant machine -- color me VERY skeptical unless you mean "ancient" to be "sometime after 1500 AD."

I cant heardly make out the machine but the pic with 'hieroglyphs' they look like arabic. In fact im pretty sure it is arabic. would be interesting to see what they say.

The big "machine" is the piece de resistance of the pictures, of course, but there're two things about it that moved the needle on my personal bulsht-meter.

First, what looks like gear teeth -- aren't. If you examine the picture carefully, what looks like spur or bevel gears aren't, but more like some sort of involute decoration.

Also, we have no idea what the size of it is. That thing could be three inches or three feet tall, placed within a couple of inches of a very short-focus lens (like a 18mm lens in a 35mm camera), and the depth of focus inherent is such a lens would make it look three times as large as the dumpster fifteen feet away.

Second, the whole idea about the government burying some secret whizzbang is silly. If it were secret and they wanted to study it, they'd haul it off somewhere. If it were secret and they didn't want to study it, theny they'd still haul it off somewhere and maybe break it up.

But re-burying something that was supposedly secret (where it might be found again) just doesn't make any sense.

Anyone whos studied the construcion of the pyramids knows that architecturaly they are more precise than the sky scrapers built with the technology of today..

The pyramid of kheops has bore holes for air at its base that require a pression that is nearly impossible with the diamond point drills they have today..and the slabs, some weighing upto 3 tonnes, are cut with a precision that is impossible without machinery..and the bare the marks of being cut with a revolving blade cutting at a greater velocity than the cutters we have now..

In 1936 in a village outside Baghdad, a clay pot 6 inches high containing copper strips in cylindrical form with soldered edges and a copper base that was sealed with bitumen was discovered. The top, also sealed with bitumen supported an iron rod that sat in the centre of the copper. The iron had signs of being corroded by acid. It is the ealiest form of battery known from more than 2000 years ago.

The Delhi Iron Pillar really isn't ancient.

The pillar was erected in about the fourth century AD, although some have said that it is about 2300 years old.

But that giant machine is interesting. I can't find anything else on it. The site really should elaborate on where this picture comes from. My first thought was that if it is true that is was dug up, maybe it was a piece of mining equipment that fell down a shaft or something. Some of those machines were huge. Because more info wasn't given, makes me think it's BS.

Andy1972 says:

Anyone whos studied the construcion of the pyramids knows that architecturaly they are more precise than the sky scrapers built with the technology of today..

I don't see how you can say that, since the facing of the payramids has pretty well worn off, so all we're usually looking at is the underlayment. And I don't know if any surveyor has measured the bases, angles, and area of the faces with any accuracy, but I'd be surprised indeed if the accuracies were within a magnitude of three or four as close as a modern building. Do you have any data to back up this assertion?

The pyramid of kheops has bore holes for air at its base that require a pression that is nearly impossible with the diamond point drills they have today...

How do you know this? Do you have any data on the variance of the air holes in the Cheops pyramid? I don't! And I think our drill shafts and bits are quite a bit more accurate than those forged three thousand years ago. Again, where is your data?

"....and the slabs, some weighing upto 3 tonnes, are cut with a precision that is impossible without machinery..and the bare the marks of being cut with a revolving blade cutting at a greater velocity than the cutters we have now..."

I don't see how you can look at a slab and tell the speed of the cutter. Perhaps you'd care to share you background data with us.

"In 1936 ...It is the ealiest form of battery known from more than 2000 years ago.

True, but that's old news, and most researchers today believe it's a great idea that was possibly used in electroplating jewelry.

But that doesn't speak to strange and mysterieus technological breakthroughs in the past; rather that the people of a couple millennia ago weren't exactly neolithic hunter-gatherers!

Don't get me wrong, Andy; I'm not shooting down the abilities of the ancient Egyptians. If you ask any modern aerospace engineer or project manager who the father of his craft is, he'll (assuming he knows his history) likely as not say Imhotep, a true giant of a man.

But there's a big jump between that and mysterious ancient civilizations whose capabilities exceed ours today!

I do not believe that we give our ancestors enough credit. We seem to have a belief that we are as smart as human beings have ever been in the history of the Earth. That may not be entirely true. There are all kind of ancient machines and ancient batteries.

This is one of the best: The Antikythera Mechanism
www.math.sunysb.edu...

It seems that the human race has obtained advance technological states throughout the ages but could not hold onto them. Disease, wars, dark ages, etc. all wrecked not only the machines but the knowledge of the science putting mankind back at the starting point where they would have to learn and discover all over again.

I don't know, it has taken us 6,000 years to get this far technologically speaking. And most of that has only been in the last 100 years. What were we doing the other 5,900 years? Makes us look kinda dumb.

Wonder what that thing is? And if it is real?

I don't know, think about the sightings of flying saucers, that are aparently depicted on ancient walls and stone. You might be suprised at what may be found if you dig around and explore enough.

Troy

Not relating to the site mentioned here, but here is a website devoted to stoneworking techniques used by the Egyptians:

Link

A lot of the page discusses the use of machine tools to cut stone, as presented as evidence from study of tool marks left on the stone. The precision is absolutely amazing and could not have been done with some form of lost technology.

For example, the author compares trepanning (a hole saw), used to cut granite. A modern stone cutting company quoted today - using diamond tipped saws - they can bore a hole in granite at 900 RPM with a feed rate of .0002" per revolution, but apparently the Egyptians were able to bore a hole at an astounding .100" per revolution feed rate - 500 times faster.

As a machinist, I know a lot about cutting speeds and machining practices, and for one, I don't see any way they could cut stone in the manner they did without machine tools and some form of advanced technology. Even the task of moving large stones is undaunting in and of itself.

I think the reason we find these seeming anachronisms in technology of ancient cultures having been lost through history is because every so often, a big arse meteor, or a nasty super volcano, or even perhaps a polar shift comes along and very quickly, probably within a few generations, puts us back to a neolithic state. I think our ancient obsession with astronomy wasn't motivated so much by agriculture as it was by survival. Nothing new under the sun, they say.

Interesting Post :

I'd want to reasearch some of the items mentioned, and get maybe a decent archaeologist's attribution to fully believe it, but I guess these thigs may be possible.

Here's another good site from Smith College:

It's not bad for a college site, but some of their dates are off a little.

www.smith.edu...

Check out the Trepanation Kit, or my personal favorite - the Battery of Baghdad.

Ordo Crypto

"The scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and microphones of his own age" C.S.Lewis"