Originally posted by anon72
SUDDEN APPEARANCE:
While a favorite claim in these sort of sources, it is quite far from the truth. We have long documentation of pre-urban civilizations that rose to
urban civilizations. The trouble is, most of the "intermediate" periods were deconstructed or built over or - in the case of many near eastern
settlements, simply melted over thousands of years of rain (mud bricks, and all that). If you dug deep enough under modern Cairo, I'm sure you'd
find gradual steps of civilization all the way to hunter-gatherer river dwellers. it's just that one of the world's biggest cities is on top of all
the evidence.
The Baalbek Monolithic Stones
Another favorite claim is the "THIS CANNOT BE DONE BY MODERN SCIENCE!" often backed by the claim that "A crane cannot lift this rock!" - maybe
not, but we've got lots of machinery besides cranes. Give people enough money as incentive, and they WILL figure out a way to do darn near any task
you can think of. Would shoving these rocks around have been easy? No. Impossible, though? of course not. This whole argument is basically predicated
on our ancestors being infantile idiots who were inherently less intelligent than us. Seeing as how they're the ones who laid the foundations for all
the things that make us feel so smart today, i'm willing to give them a little more credit.
Ancient Precision Stone Cutting
Obsidian has no crystalline structure. It is
very easy to shape with a great deal of precision because of this, and takes a high polish. While
the material is fragile, you'll notice that it is round on all sides, and thus able to withstand a good deal of pressure (Sort of like how light
bulbs manage to be so sturdy, despite being even thinner and made of an even more fragile material)
"And why did they need earplugs anyway?"
Not
that kind of earplug. It's a sort of ear piercing:
static1.px.yelpcdn.com...
On edit: I'm actually convinced that the spool-shaped plugs pictured in the source are, in fact, modern. The Aztecs seem to have primarily made their
plugs solid, from jade, coral, or gold. The picture in question is to be found only on "unexplained mysteries" sites; and the design itself is
extremely Spartan and functional. The Aztec liked having pretty things to jam in the gaping holes they put into their bodies.
The kind of precision stone cutting and even stone transportation associated with the Egyptian pyramids cannot be explained by the use of
the primitive technology available to the Egyptians. In fact, the technology of the older pyramids is probably beyond the Egyptians ability. The thing
is, this "stone technology" problem turns up all over the world.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/49cf170017d2.jpg[/atsimg]
The picture is from Sacsayhuaman, Peru, probably an ancient stone fortress in excess of 2000 years old. Some of these stones are 10 feet high or
more. Notice their irregular forms. They have been fitted together in an extremely precise manner which we would be hard pressed to duplicate with
modern technology; much less the primitive technology supposedly available.
"Primitive technology", "Primitive technology", "primitive technology" - never do go into much detail about this "primitive technology" do
they? And the constant reinforcement that "we would have trouble doing this today!" I suppose that makes our technology pretty primitive, too, if we
can't figure out how to shape stones to fit together neatly.
Fact is, the Egyptians had stoneworking techniques that were quite advanced for their time; they would have to, they were working in stone when most
of their neighbors were working in mud. As a civilization they existed for well over a thousand years; plenty of time to perfect the techniques. We
already know they were pioneers of the modern fields of mathematics and geometry, both very crucial to the sort of building they did. And finally...
the pyramids aren't really all that precise. They're
big, but for the most part they're just piles of rock with some nice facing.
Same story on the Inka walls - the front looks nice but there's mostly garbage in the back. Also like the Egyptians, the Inka had lots of practice in
stone work... they had to. The Inka emperors (and their predecessors in previous Andean empires) used these sort of projects as a form of social
control; They would have the peasants painstakingly build and construct these walls and roads and monuments... and then take them apart to build new
ones somewhere else. And if you screwed up, you got killed. All with the intention of keeping people too exhausted and dependent to rebel. It was
apparently a fantastic environment for the rapid development of stonemasonry skills.
500,000 Year Old Spark Plugs?
Concretions cannot be accurately dated; they are literally a hodgepodge of ages. You might have a seven billion year old lump of basalt next to a two
year old bit of wood wrapped up in sand and clay that date to fifty thousand years ago, wrapped around, say, a spark plug from the early 20th century.
"20,000 to 100,000" Year Old Metal "Screws"
Depths from 3 to 40 feet? That's a HUGE range, and unfortunately doesn't tell us much. However, looking at those pictures, know what they look like
to me? Ringmail. This is how they used to make the stuff, by making a wire, then spooling it, and clipping the loops.
ANOMALIES IN COAL AND ROCK
These sort of discoveries never seem to happen in front of multiple witnesses, except the finders' good friends. Have you noticed that? The finder is
always either alone or with his best mates when he finds this thing. nd usually the first thing that happens is not that he calls some people to try
to find an expert and go "I just found a freaking bell in my coal!" - no, he chucks the coal into his furnace and then carries the bell to the bar
to try to use the story for a drink on the house.
One imagines that with the frequency of these stories, people at the start of the industrial revolution were constantly shoveling bells, bullets,
doorknobs, pterodactyls, guns, shoes, and iPhones out of their furnaces.
The Red Bird Petroglyph of Kentucky; Evidence of Ancient Cultures in the Americas
First off, gotta love the "evidence of ancient cultures in the Americas" bit - because us Indians were neither cultures nor ancient, apparently. I
digress.
Looking at the claimed petroglyphs... Ogham? Hebrew?
really? Neither of those are anything of the sort. and a circle on a rock is conclusive
evidence of a "sun disk, symbol of RA!"? Maybe it's just a circle.
You get a lot of this in the wacky hinterlands of America. Nobody wants to think that a bunch of bored Indians might have just been scraping pictures
on a rock, and the notion that maybe white settlers did it for fun (or in the case of Mormon defacements, to "prove" that their religion is true)
absolutely is never considered.
Nah, it
has to be the Egyptians in Kentucky (how'd they get there, since we've been told they were so stupid they couldn't even stack rocks
with their "primitive technology" anyway?)
[edit on 11-6-2010 by TheWalkingFox]
[edit on 11-6-2010 by TheWalkingFox]