Ancient Machinery

Originally posted by groingrinder
WW2 airplanes crashed landed in Greenland now lie under 300 FEET OF SOLID ICE!!

In Greenland, yes, where due to snowfall the average rate of ice accumulation is about 26cm/yr, greater than that I believe where those planes were found. 300 ft of ice divided by ummm about 55 years they were there? That would give about 5.5 ft per year. Tell me to you have to remove 5.5 ft of silt and debris from the roof of your house each year to keep it from being burried?

That is an EXTREME example and is not indicative of what one could normally expect any kinds of ruins to be burried

Groingrinder says:

WW2 airplanes crashed landed in Greenland now lie under 300 FEET OF SOLID ICE!! Imagine how much sediment lies over something involved in a whole world cataclysm that occured over five thousand years ago.

It depends on where you are. Most places don't have sediments unless they're carried there by rivers or sand dunes. Where you and I live, GG, we have about 7 inches (18 cm) of rain per year; how much sediment covers the Hohokam, Sinagua and Mogollon cultures of over a thousand years ago? An inch, maybe two? Certainly no more than that!

And how much sediment covered the ~10,000-year-old Covis points found in New Mexico?

I heard somebody the other night talking who said 3,0000 feet of sediments was his estimate on how far down to go to get to where we should be finding stuff from these lost civilizations. Nobody's metal detector works down to 3,000 feet, so we are finding this stuff on a hit or miss basis.

Who was this person and where did he pull his estimates from? If there're 3,000 feet of sediment covering "lost civilizations" that would mean that the sedimentation pattern of the Earth is constant and uniform; neither of those are true, as anyone who has visited Arizona and Utah know.

The fact of the matter is, although there are a lot of human cultures that lived and are now lost to the ravages of time, there still isn't anything at all to provide any evidence that there were lost civilizations any higher than, say, Harappan- or Akkadian-level cultures.

This isn't to hoo-raw the level of civilizations that could be and are being found; there are certainly cultures which involved agriculture, permanent buildings, organizational structure, and writing and astronomy. Indeed, the ruins being found only now at about 30 meters depth in the Black sea (when it was a fresh water lake prior to the break-through of the Mediterranean Sea through what's now the Dardanelles), is standing eurasian archaeology, and even Indo-European linguistics, on its head!

But that's not machine civilization. As our colleague Byrd has said on many occasions, there is simply no way of covering up pieces of a machine civilization with its mines, quarries, etc., even if there were a "cataclysm" five thousand years ago.

And there's absolutely no evidence for such an all-encompassing cataclysm -- which would be necessary to cover up a putative ancient machine civilization.

PS: You're still in AJ, aren't you? We need to get together sometime!

Originally posted by Earth Angel
The great pyramid of giza may have been a power plant!

I think that's one of the most ridiculous sites I've seen.

The person seems to think that the pyramid is sitting in the middle of nowhere, maybe with only the sphynx around it. In reality, it's a huge cemetary (yes, really) with NINE burial pyramids, lots of temples painted with prayers and names of the deceased and workers' huts and written clay tablet records and so forth and they all say it's a cemetary.

if you have read my post above about the chemical substances used to move the blocks which built the pyramids one may ask how such chemicals where around in the time of the HUNTER GATHERERS!

I think you've gotten your timelines confused.

By the time the pyramids were built, Egyptians had left the hunter-gatherer culture far behind. They'd had cities for at least 2,000 years before the first pyramid was built and there are indications that the Nubians in the area were doing chemical mummification nearly 8,000 years ago.

That's long before the pyramid at Giza.

There's also a long sequence of pyramids, including the mastabas (which are around 5,000 years old if memory serves) and the Bent Pyramid and other pyramids... several hundred of them.

Captain Proton says:

The silly thing is that most of these supposedly advanced civilizations probably existed sometime during the ice age.

Unless you're privy to some data that I'm not, what is your rationale for saying that these putative 'advanced civilizations' -- if they existed at all -- were in place during the Pleistocene? We have Indo-European and African data from that time period -- especially in Europe, where the Cro-Magnons were displacing the Neanderthals -- and we don't even have evidence for agriculture!

And since a lot of the world's water was trapped in glacial and polar ice the sea levels would have been around 400 feet lower than they are today.

True.

So it follows that successful and advanced civilizations may have existed on these coasts which would not have been the same coasts of today.

Why do you say that? Certainly there are a lot of civilizations which developed on the seashore, but the Egyptians, Sumerians, Inca, and Toltec didn't! And, if you postulate a Pleistocene machine civilization in the middle of what is now the Mediterranean or Black Seas or the English Channel, then why did these civilized folks not dig mines in what is now Anatolia or Croatia? Why didn't they have at least some sort of settlements in the Dordogne Valley or in what is now Sicily or North Africa. I mean, we have archaeological record of hunter-gatherer societies there; are you saying that these civilizations didn't even visit the areas where we know there were Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon cultures?

I mean, here in Arizona we have a lot of records and evidence that showed a thriving trade between Aztec (and probably Toltec) cultures trading with the Anasazi and Hohokam Indians, and that's two thousand miles away.

If there were some sort of advanced civilization, they would've done at least some trading with the hunter-gatherers in Europe for whom we have actual archaeological records -- but no glass beads.

Sorry, Captain Proton. As I see it, your assertions just don't hold together. Not only is there no evidence at all for it, but the concept doesn't even make sense.

Originally posted by andy1972
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..

Actually, I HAVE studied the pyramids, in depth, and have visited several of them multiple times.

They are LESS precise than has been achieved by other peoples with similar levels of technology.

Just one example is the gaps between the sides of the internal blocks of stone in most of the classic pyramids. The builders left large gaps. This actually did two things: First, it means that the pyramid wieghs less, and so doesn't apply quite as much pressure on its foundations. Second, the gaps made up for the fact that most of the internal blocks are not "on the square,"--they are imprecrise cubes. The only really care was taken with their upper and lower faces, which are carefully marked, so that each course is fairly accurate; even so, you can see where individual blocks were "flattened" on the top face after being positioned.

A much more stunning example is the "alignment tubes" and the orientation of the pyramids' faces. Egyptian murals show how the aligments were made. Workers build a wall in a circle. At dusk, Pharaoh came out and ceremonially laid a stick on the wall where sirius rose. Then later, before dawn, Pharaoh came with a great precession of priests and laid a stick on the wall to mark the spot where Sirius set. Later, after Pharoah was gone, the priests would do some geometry and divide the angle between the two sticks by two, thus arriving at the celestial north pole, as well as the proper ascension for the aligment tube.

The amazing thing is, dividing and angle by two actually requires higher geometry (try it yourself). This was done with great accuracy. But Pharoah laying the stick was NOT accurate. At the University of Texas in the mid 1980's, we replicated the whole ceremony of determining celestial north. Using the same tools (rope, sticks, and a flat wall) we produced celestial north within one tenth of a degree. The historic egyptians were off by almost a degree!

Why is this? Because they "couldn't" be accurate? No. They were imprecise because it didn't matter to them. The important thing was that matchless Pharoah had laid out the pyramids like unto mighty Ptah stretching forth the remains of Geb, the earth god, under the eternal heavens. Since no one would know the accuracy for at least 3000 years after that night, it really didn't matter which direction the "real" north was. What mattered was that Pharaoh had brought human society into harmony with the earth and heavens.



IF you want REAL ancient Accuracy, try out the ANTIKITHERA DEVICE. I bring it up a thousand times, but no one ever comments on That incredible find:

www.mlahanas.de...

We can actually date the shipwreck from the astronomical setting of the device! even more, we have evidence that one such device was ordered from the firm on the Island of Rhodes where they were produced. Several ancient authors mention this kind of computer, including Ovid, Plutarch, and Cicero.

ccat.sas.upenn.edu...

Now that is REAL precision, and a REAL understanding of planetary motions, as well as "our place in the cosmos" ! ! !

Originally posted by Byrd


Flying vehicle -- no. Misinterpretation of real artifacts.

I'm a skeptical type myself, but the airplane in question as well as these "insect jewlery" pieces: FLYING MACHINE, were featured elsewhere on this site recently. Someone had turned EXACT scale replicas into working RC type aircraft! Anyone have the link? I think it is possible that an advanced civilization could have existed in remote antiquity (15,000 years ago?) and could be gone without a trace, more or less. Anything not made of stone would likely be gone. From time to time these tantalizing clues appear but are dismissed as being "impossible". Hmmm.

[edit on 25-5-2005 by opensecret1150]

[edit on 25-5-2005 by opensecret1150]

[edit on 25-5-2005 by opensecret1150]

Originally posted by andy1972
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.

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
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?

Ah my friend the mysteries of the pyramids are mind-boggling, and I think point to the reality of lost technologies. For instance according to the official records The pyramids are level to within 1/2 inch!! PYRAMID This information is easily availible. They are truly astonishing and you should check it out! By the way I know how they made it so level. No magic, just very, very clever people! In some ways smarter than we are today.

Originally posted by twitchy
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.

I totally agree!

Originally posted by Zipdot

Originally posted by twitchy
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.

That still doesn't explain the lack of ancient mines.

Zip

So sorry, you are wrong. ANCIENT COPPER MINES OF MICHIGAN

Whatever is true, I think current evolutionary theory may crumble due to evidence contradicting it, and is allready facing doubts due to fossil evidence.

Troy

I hope you all won't think this question is incredibly inane, but ... I'm curious as to how advanced a civilization would have to be in order to have flying machines of some nature. Not necessarily jets or UFOs, but simple flying machines. I guess what I'm asking is, is it possible that earlier civilizations did, perhaps have gliders or some other form of aerial movement?

If they had that, it is possible that they may not have been as "civilized" as current day cultures, because of where they placed their emphasis. There was, in those days, a really large movement to be closer to the gods, up to and including human sacrifice, often on a grandiose scale. Could they have been a civilization that did, inadvertently, discover a method of flight, while still not having seen the necessity of developing ground transport that was commensurate?

I hope I asked this clearly enough ... If not, please let me know, and I will try again.

Thanks,

Dan

Opensecret, while I certainly appreciate and applaud your responses, I have some concerns with some of them. Let me elucidate:

I'm a skeptical type myself, but the airplane in question as well as these "insect jewlery" pieces: FLYING MACHINE, were featured elsewhere on this site recently.

That’s hardly evidence for their veracity.

Someone had turned EXACT scale replicas into working RC type aircraft! Anyone have the link?

No, I don’t have any link; unless I see a link and look at the model, then I’m assuming that it hasn’t happened. Perhaps you’re confusing that with the statement (from your own link):

”As a result of their findings, a special exhibit was set up in the center hall of the Cairo museum, with the little model as its centerpiece. It was even labelled as a model airplane.”

There’s a big difference between that and the putative remote controlled model airplanes.

I went through your link, and the writer doesn’t seem to know too much about aircraft. For example he talks about a reverse dihedral as though it were a tremendously involved idea, yet you see the same reverse dihedral in some of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings; and Louis Bleriot’s monoplane which flew the English Channel in 1909 had reverse dihedral wings.

As a matter of fact, if you look at a lot of birds, you will see reverse dihedral wings of some of them when they glide.

and I think it is possible that an advanced civilization could have existed in remote antiquity (15,000 years ago?) and could be gone without a trace, more or less. Anything not made of stone would likely be gone. From time to time these tantalizing clues appear but are dismissed as being "impossible". Hmmm.

Anything’s possible, but since there is no evidence for any 15,000-year-old advanced civilizations, I shall treat them the same way I do the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, or “chem-trails”: No evidence, nevah happen.

For instance according to the official records The pyramids are level to within 1/2 inch!! PYRAMID This information is easily availible. They are truly astonishing and you should check it out!

I saw where the Egyptians surveyed the base and found it level to within a half-inch. No big deal. All you have to do is to put a long, open trough of water across the pyramid from one corner to another, fill it with water, and measure from the level water depth to the area immediately below it, and you have your +/- half-inch accuracy.

But I wasn’t talking about the base of the pyramid; that’s not a big deal. We’re talking about the actual pyramid itself and the fact that it’s not all that accurate – at least, not by modern standards.

By the way I know how they made it so level. No magic, just very, very clever people!

If you know what it is (and I’m sure you’re going to share it with us) then that pretty well eliminates the high-tech mystery civilization theory, doesn’t it?

So sorry, you are wrong. ANCIENT COPPER MINES OF MICHIGAN

(in response to the question as to “where are the mines?” Opensecret, I think the mines that Zipdot was talking about were not the small ones that Amerinds used for small amounts of copper; he was talking about the iron mines and the blast furnace ruins with the slag that would be required for your putative ancient machine civilization. A machine civilization takes a lot of steel and other metals. While copper mining is certainly nothing to sneer at – especially when you’re looking at a basic Neolithic culture – the presence of hand-dug copper mines is no evidence at all for the kind of civilization you’re talking about.

In short, Opensecret, while I appreciate you attempt to answer the questions raised here, I don’t believe you did so.

sigung says:

I hope you all won't think this question is incredibly inane, but ... I'm curious as to how advanced a civilization would have to be in order to have flying machines of some nature. Not necessarily jets or UFOs, but simple flying machines. I guess what I'm asking is, is it possible that earlier civilizations did, perhaps have gliders or some other form of aerial movement?

I think your question is incredibly complex and a real pain in the butt to answer, but it's certainly not inane!!

Bear with me, I'm just thinking out loud here.

Since we are faced with a certainly atmospheric pressure and gravity baseline here, we can be pretty sure that man-powered heavier-than-air flight is a non-starter. Sure, we have a guy who trained for a long time pedal an ultraultraultralight gossamer condor across the English Channel, but that couldn't have been done unless the ancients had access to materials such as carbon fiber, micrometer-thick plastic sheeting, etc. etc.

How about wind-powered heavier-than-air craft, i.e., gliders or sailplanes? That would be possible and even feasible, if you had the time and money (which I’m sure many ancient kings did) to build one by trial and error.

But given the lack of any sort of precision metallurgy or monomer/polymer chemistry, the glider would probably be made of glued animal bladders or pitch-impregnated linen/silk over a bamboo frame. Would it work? Of course! But you'd need a cliff or a mountainside to launch it, and your chances of taking advantage of thermals to get you back even close to where you wanted to go is iffy at best.

And, of course, linen, bladders, and bamboo tend to go away after a couple hundred years; if ever such an aircraft were made, it wouldn't be around for us to see today.

how about lighter-than-air craft (hot air balloons, in this case)?

Well, certainly the Montgolfier brothers were not from a machine civilization, although they did have steel and other alloys in the 1700's. A lighter-than-air craft is a lot more feasible than a heavier -than-air craft, and there have even been hints that such balloons were built and used (possibly tethered) in the altiplano during pre-Inca times.

Interestingly enough, some people have said that the putative balloon flights were incorporated as a part of a religious ritual, which ties in with your statement about possibly wanting to be 'nearer the gods'.

So my answer to you, sigung, is...

Who knows?

[edit on 26-5-2005 by Off_The_Street]

I think it is obvious that the pyramids will not look precisely acurate considering how old they are with erosion and subsidance!

They where built with accurate prescision at the time. Which the sphynx dates back to at least 10,500 to 12,500 BC

[edit on 05012005 by Earth Angel]

There are no templates, no names of the builders or desceased builders in Khufu's pyramid. No Hieroglyphs, busts, statues.

A fraud named Howard Vyse had faked hieroglyphs in a proportion of the pyramid he had blow out to reach a chamber of which there is said to be three, i don't no where nine came from!! Anyway the glyphs didn't add up due to bad research, he wanted himself to be famous for a discovery so he had to fake one misleading the world.

The point is the great pyramid is a great mystery because of the lack of hierolgyphs and the like praising the builders. So it is no more a cemetry for the dead than it was a power plant which is very plausable.

Tuthum Karmoon's chamber (excuse spelling) had a what archeologists thought was a (pretty picture) across the chest of the soaurcofacuhs (god knows how you spell that) It turned out to be plans of an aircraft. One man forget his name took it on himself to try and build it, not only did he build it following the diagrahms but it flew as well.

There are ancient clay models ao plains in the Brittish museum from the Azteks and Mayans, now have a good laugh at that.....if you have a dead end imagination WAKE UP








[edit on 05012005 by Earth Angel]

[edit on 05012005 by Earth Angel]

Earth Angel says:

Tuthum Karmoon's chamber (excuse spelling) had a what archeologists thought was a (pretty picture) across the chest of the soaurcofacuhs (god knows how you spell that) It turned out to be plans of an aircraft. One man forget his name took it on himself to try and build it, not only did he build it following the diagrahms but it flew as well.

It's kind of suspicious that all of this talk about airplanes are by people whose name no one seems to remember or with data that no one seems to find.

I don't buy it, Earth Angel, any more than I buy the business about someone making a radio controlled model from the little piece of jewelry. If you have any evidence, I think everyone here will be willing to look at it; we are supposed to be denying ignorance, after all -- right?

But all this "I forget his name" or "It's on the Internet somewhere" doesn't cut it. I think it's all bogus.

Something is wrong with the picture in Egypt. (this is not the only place with pyramids mind you) Here was this advanced civilization, with beautifully precision built pyramids. Lets open our minds here. Stories of flying machines have been around for thousands of years, and there are pictures. Yet we are riding horse drawn carriages up untill the 1800s, and just now we have jets and such. A great catastophy can burry and destroy a lot of things. (umm, huge flood anyone for one possible catastrophy?)

And are our fossil records even accurate, catastrophies could shift around a lot of material?

Troy

While I want to believe in ancient advanced civilizations, the little plane looking egyptian painting just doesn't cut it for me. Heres Why:

You said the guy created an exact model based off of the picture. Ok now what is your definition of exact? because to me exact denotes building on a scale basis i.e 1cm = 1 meter etc. And in this case you have at most a couple of repetitions to work off of. Hardly the basis for a scale model which most of the time would require at minimum a draftsman's 3 view drawing to complete.

Did someone make a model based off of the pic? Undoubtedly they did however if you look at Radio control modeller sites you will find countless flying replicas of fictional movie aircraft, concept art, etc. A good case in point would be the recent Firefox thread we had in the aviation area of ATS. There was never any "real" mig 31 firefox yet people have built models inspired by the fictional aircraft or even to scale.

Just my humble two cents thanks for reading

cybertroy says:

Something is wrong with the picture in Egypt. (this is not the only place with pyramids mind you) Here was this advanced civilization, with beautifully precision built pyramids.

Why do you think that, because someone can build something straight and level (since the only tools you need for doing so are a trough of water and a non-stretching line) that there should be complex alloys, internal combustion engines, and an infrastructure to support aircraft manufacture?

That's like saying that, since I know how to spray on a topical anesthetic and apply a Band-Aid, I should also be able to perform a renal transplant or a stomach resection! no. It doesn't follow. The first item does not presuppose the latter.

Lets open our minds here. Stories of flying machines have been around for thousands of years, and there are pictures.

And so have stories of Santa Claus, devils with horns, and dragons. Do you seriously consider those myths as "evidence" for the existence of those chimerae?

Yet we are riding horse drawn carriages up untill the 1800s, and just now we have jets and such.

And why is that so surprising? We didn't even have a printing press until the fifteenth century, which meant we had no way whatsoever of reliably transmitting knowledge (scientific or otherwise) to a large audience. And it wasn't until we had developed a rational method of looking at data in the seventeenth century, along with the invention of a calculus in the seventeenth century, that we had all of the tools needed to design and build mechanisms based on a realistic view of the universe.

So it shouldn't come as any surprise that we saw a great leap forward in understanding and design; it couldn't have happened any sooner!

By the way, doi you know that ninety percent of all the engineers and scientists who ever lived are alive today? Are you familiar with an asymptotic curve?

A great catastophy can burry and destroy a lot of things. (umm, huge flood anyone for one possible catastrophy?)

If that were the case, then why isn't there any geological evidence for this "great catastrophe"? And how do you explain that your "great catastrophe" destroyed large ancient machine civilizations in their entirety, yet didn't destroy the records of the contemporary hunter gatherer human cultures throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe?

Cybertroy, that dog won't hunt.