Best Conspiracy!!! Ancient Diorite sic cut

here is a wikipedia link for those of you who dont know:

en.wikipedia.org...

ok so i was watching tv and this isnt on the wikipedia but thre is a place and im sure someone will know the palce where this stuff exists and is cut with precision indicating a knowledge of tools.

ok a knowledge of tools is no big deal since cavemen used stones and flint etc i not going on about that. I am finishing another degree and this time in chemistry so this is my question how did ancient civs cut this stuff? thing is Diorite on a hardness scale can only be cut with a diamond.

not like they had diamond saws, so they must have used something and i want to know what and noone has an answer nto a single prof in my whole dept can figure it out either. stone working techniques only allowed at the time for basically stacking these things up and thre isnt enough of it to build walls or a house so that is BS on the wikipedia page they site no source so im calling BS on them.


anyhow so if you want a real conspiracy there it is, good luck and have fun with it.

This is interesting. The Wikipedia article links to this page about the Code of Hammurabi, which was carved in diorite.

I never knew there was an actual cult that developed around it, though. Maybe they perfected techniques for hitting certain points and causing it to crumble. Maybe they simply made enough time to polish it using simple abrasion. Maybe they used chemicals.

I've heard about a theory where ancient egyptians cut granite by putting sand underneath their saws. Maybe these people did something similar.

shaping stone is as much an art as a science, and stone hardness doesnt preclude simple tool working. Modern man likes to use labor saving tools like diamond saws, but that doesnt mean elbow grease can do the same thing.

Originally posted by frankensence
shaping stone is as much an art as a science, and stone hardness doesnt preclude simple tool working. Modern man likes to use labor saving tools like diamond saws, but that doesnt mean elbow grease can do the same thing.

Indeed... Wood and water can split a granite block in half, how does that compare on the hardness scale?

I'm sure making the diorite vase wasnt easy, but the fact that they did it is... well, right there. And there is no pyramid powered electrical diamond saw in sight.

[edit on 25-4-2009 by merka]

reply to post by tigpoppa
'Can only be cut with diamonds' is one of those phrases that litter 'forbidden archeology and lost civilization' books and films. It's simply rhetorical and stated as fact. When I was younger, I believed what I read to the degree that I thought some of the AE benches could only be made with micrometers and machinery. It's all BS, of course.

A common method of cutting diorite was using a copper bar with water and sand to cut grooves etc. For drilling they would use a basic drill press made from timber. Four legs and cross braces, a spindle attached to a copper rod. Mortice and tenon grooves to keep the press stable and at least one strong, heavy guy pushing the rod down as two others moved the bow that moved the spindle. Adding water and fine sand made the process more efficient.

When these people withhold information about 'how' ancient people worked stone, they want you to buy what they are selling. In these cases, it's usually that an unknown civilization or aliens did it. If they say that they couldn't fashion hard stone with the tools available, they are leading you to think, "Well if we didn't...who did?" What looks like a solid argument for aliens/lost civilization is a spider web creation. The gaps are the facts they leave out and the threads are what they leave for you to see.

I've seen this in a program on the History Channel called Ancient Aliens.

I don't think aliens came to earth to cut stone for us.

I'm sure there's a method to cut diorite without diamond tipped tools.

It is pretty amazing however, that people of that time figured out how to cut it so precisely.

Oh, and Tigpoppa, your avatar made me laugh

[edit on 4/25/2009 by Alexander the Great]

shaping stone is as much an art as a science, and stone hardness doesnt preclude simple tool working. Modern man likes to use labor saving tools like diamond saws, but that doesnt mean elbow grease can do the same thing.

Indeed. Egypt also left vases that are not only well-crafted in the modern sense but they left us reliefs of how they were made.

This is a really wonderful website called Unforbidden Geology that depicts many of these ancient stone working methods.

Egypt also carved many of their statuary from diorite. This page from Unforbidden Geology displays how they shaped diorite using stone tools.

Sorry guys but I'll take Chris Dunn's opinions over your's every time. He's an engineer and knows his shi_. You can't cut diorite or granite with copper tools with space-age precision. You can split a chunk in half but I wouldn't call that space-age precision. Choral Castle is an example of incredible work, and they can't figure out how he did it.
I just looked at unforbidden Geology, it's excellent. You should send it to Chris Dunn.

www.gizapower.com...

[edit on 25-4-2009 by Sargoth]

reply to post by Sargoth


So i guess that the copper bladed block saw, at a former local area granite quarry, doesnt exsist nor do the literaly thousands of finely cut granite blocks that came out of the quarry in the ninetheenth century.
The process is still in use today and a variation of it cable sawing is the most widely used method of cutting large blocks from quarries.

There is a previous (existing) thread that expands on this subject, and I believe the actual location you're talking about here. Interesting stuff for sure, I hadn't heard of it before picking up the thread. I'll never be the same again!

Just kidding, i'm the same. Diorite isn't the superman of rock, and there isn't just one thing alone capable of cutting it. We consistently give the ancients very little credit for the technological advances they made, because they simply don't compare to the advances of our current time. Or do they? After all, our technology would not be so advanced if not for the ancients who learned that, for example, cutting diorite is possible with a more complex tool.

Punkinworks, are you saying you believe they only had copper tools? If so
how would they carve out the interior of a sarcophagus box with precision?

Originally posted by Sargoth
Punkinworks, are you saying you believe they only had copper tools? If so
how would they carve out the interior of a sarcophagus box with precision?

Generally they cut six slabs of granite, pounded and polished them level (you can see the technique on all their granite statues and columns) and then fitted the box together. At least, that's the technique used on Hatshepsut's sarcophagus (which I've seen with my own eyes) and on the ones displayed in the Tut exhibit.

From the thread linked by 'the Cyphre'...

Punkinworks offers a better description of the process of cutting and shaping diorite...

there are several ways to make the straight grooves, one is to saw it with a copper saw. Just like the do in quarries today and have for thousads of years. First you chisel a starter groove then You take a flat bar of copper saw it back and forth with water and sand, small grains of aluminum oxide(quartz) will imbed in the copper bar and slowly and finely grind away the stone. Its time consuming and labor intensive. drilling the holes is accomplished in the same manner you have a copper rod that is the drill. it is mounted to a wooden dowel, we'll call that the spindle. you build a wooden frame to support the spindle. well say its like a table without a top, you have four legs connected by cross supports at the top and maybe the bottom. there are 2 verticle boards on opposite sides of the frame that have a groove or slot running on center from top to bottom, a long groove like mortise. On the bottom is a board, with stubs on the ends that fit tightly in the grooves, has a hole in its center that guides the spindle. on the top is another board that has maybe has a dished piece of stone mounted in the center, this is the thrust bearing for the spindle. it has tenons that allow it to move freely up and down in the groove on the frame, and handles which a couple of big guys can put force down into the end of the spindle. Add a bow to drive the spindle and you have a basic drill press that has been used for millenia. As the bowmen drive the spindle back and forth the big guys push down on the spindle another adds sand and water and you drill a hole. you put a stop peg in or use a gauge block and every hole is the same depth.

ATS Thread:Alien helped build Puma Punku

I never heard of Puma Punku until I saw it on the History channels "Ancient Aliens." It is an amazing site with great structures. I myself wonder on who built these huge structures. I did see how they said these stones couldnt be cut without a diamond tipped edge or something, well how do we really know how they did things back then. I am all for believing aliens may have helped but I also think we dont give other civilizations enough credit. They may have done this with tools of their own making, we dont know. Just because we cant comprehend how something was done doesnt mean they couldnt have done it. IDK...Just a thought. Here are some pics of Puma Punku

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8b64ab7a286c.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/41d86f0287fb.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0c87ae9a5750.jpg[/atsimg]

It would be nice to see how this place looked when it was fully constructed and what they did there as well.

Another method, that we just recently learned the Ancient Egyptians used in the stonework for many of their monuments, including the Pyramids at Giza is a process called Culturing or Agglomeration. This is where stone is melted down and poured into molds and then reconstituted to it's hardened state as it is cooled. This actually lends to a higher tensile strength than it would to cut the stone raw, and allows for a higher precision in uniformity than cutting would.

Although this theory is far from being widely accepted, it has merits reinforced by a study at Drexel University and has been proven in a proof of concept experiment conducted at the Geopolymer Institute of France.

The melting point of Diorite is very high at high pressures, but at lower pressures it is very low (same with any stone or crystalline substance). I'm not sure what the melting point of Diorite outside of it's natural evolutionary state is (normally being produced in volcanic conditions at magmatic temperatures) but I'm sure it isn't much higher at significantly lower pressures than say marble.

I would be willing to posit that Diorite used in Art by the Ancients was Cultured and not carved. Looking at the Predynastic Egyptian Vase of Diorite on the Wikipedia page that was quoted is reason alone to consider such as a possibility.

Could you post links regarding agglomeration or culturing? I'm not sure what process you are referring to.

I work in architecture and to me, agglomeration is just the "grit" of any type of stone (usually several) mixed together and held together by a resin. It occurs as a natural process as well, but I don't see how this helps the Egyptians.

I did find this link, following the keywords you posted:

Pyramids: the formula of stone

Pretty neat, if that's even close to what the Egyptians were doing then it's going to change Egyptology. Notice how they claim the re-agglomerated limestone is even stronger than natural limestone.

This process is also very sophisticated, and Egyptian depictions don't support it as a theory.

edit: the Geopolymer.org site has a section devoted to archeology - check it out!

[edit on 29-4-2009 by Blackmarketeer]

reply to post by fraterormus
I'm happy to be corrected here, but I don't recall reading of any civilizations having technology to melt rock and mold it. Diorite is known to have been carved using copper and copper has a melting point of just above 1000 degrees Celsius. The melting point of rock is above 2000 degrees Celsius. What vessel or crucible could be used that wouldn't melt before the rock became molten?

reply to post by Blackmarketeer
Interesting link. If AE had the technology (there's no evidence that anyone ever did) the question would be why? Why would they need to build all the pyramids using cast limestone? Reducing existing limestone blocks to an aggregate, adding lime, caustic soda and binder and then creating limestone blocks seems an unlikely and inefficient process.

Their explanation that GP blocks weren't moved, but molded in situ begs one question...where are the molds beneath every single GP block? The modern process is called shuttering and uses plywood sheets. What did AE use?

The quarry marks on blocks ranging from the earliest mastabas, Djhoser pyramid and the GP rather undermine the site's assertions of limestone block manufacture. Unused blocks with the same quarry marks are still lying in quarries to this day. Many blocks have been identified as originating from specific areas.

The process illustrated by the website seems like reinventing the wheel

This really deserves its own thread -



Now you still need the raw matertial, i.e.: the limestone blocks from the quarries. Their broken down near the base of the pyramid and then turned into that slurry as deonstrated in the video, then hauled up in sacks carried by individuals. You wouldn't need a complete mold for every block, just for the starter blocks. The previous blocks could act as 2 sides of the mold for succeeding blocks.

I'd think you would have to evaluate each individually to determine if it complies with this theory. Some sites or their builders may have been ignorant of this technique or the knowledge of it lost, and relied on stone cutting and hauling.

This technique should also be evaluated for the mesoamerican sites.