Ancient masonry mysteries

Hello everyone.
This isn't a thread about genesis, ancient aliens and such so I'm not going to address the discussion on WHO did build the wonders of the past.
This is about HOW, in a very practical therm and to some extent how these skills were transmitted and lost.

Wheter you believe there was an ancient civilization world-wide or that single civilizations developed their own methods individually, it's undenyable that across the globe there are examples of marvelous stonework.

Masonry especially in the past has been a sort of secret discipline, not the kind of magic/mystic knowledge, but surely a knowledge that could define the status of peoples in their society. It is very likely that ancient civilizations had their knowledge coming from their ancestors, but how was this tradition transmitted across many generations without any records of any method used?

So first of all I would like to know how many ancient mason techniques we have any written record of?

Secondly I would like to go more in a specific place which is South America, where we have exceptional masonry AND people of those civilization alive and "interbred" at the time of spanish conquest. To be precise I'm referring mostly to the Tired Stones at Ollantaytambo, abandoned on the ramps, for which I have read on this forum that those descendants who were proficient in incan and spanish did leave a testimony on how they moved those massive rocks.

I read they said those stones were moved by 20.000 workers, half of which on the sides, but is it really possible to accomodate 10.000 people in the space of those ramps? Those blocks are rhyolite and must have weighted about 20 tonnes if not more and are said to have been moved with ropes and wood levers over cobblestones since Incas didn't have the wheel.
In the article I read (for which I am not finding the link at the moment) it was said there was evidence of this movement over cobblestones by digging under those blocks, but there wasn't any mention on what was this evidence.

I also often read about claims that basically all ancient stonework can be explained by some trial method that has been prooved by researchers. However apart a few videos of a group of people moving a Moai I never found details like material's strength, good quality images, detailed descriptions of the methods used in those trials and how they relate to the biggest or hardest of the "artifacts" found in place at those sites.

Is there a comprehensive research that details the methods and applies math to describe the most extreme cases? Because I'm not a big proponent of ancient tech, but I never see real evidence especially considering that today there is a vast amount of know-how and it would take much less to reinvent a method, but in an isolated civilization the process would have taken hundreds of years of trial and error and there should be, imho, a lot more evidence of this process which I hardly find any except in egypt and assuming the dating is correct.

Exactly because of the know-how issue, I think ancient-but-advanced civilizations that had access to iron like Greeks or Romans aren't good as a start for this journey. South and Meso american civilizations are probably more suited given their isolation from know past.
For what I could understand Egypt had iron artifacts since 5k years ago, but only 2 thousand years later they had iron metallurgy knowledge to actually use it fruitfully.
Was these hard-stone cuts made only with meteoritic iron tools? If yes then they would have been such precious tools that make sense if they were passed from generation to generation of masons together with the secret knowledge. In fact tools were probably even more important than knowledge itself when those tools were unique artifacts, and when the tools are the key there is not much reason to keep the methods secret (since you protect your secrets by possessing the key).

So ATSrs where are the images of those trials, are the testimonies from the incan descendants reliable in practice, how could a secret be kept and transmitted across thousands of years, or was it reinvented multiple times? How many people had to be made aware of these techniques to carve, cut and decorate massive structures like the pyramids or the incan monuments or Nan Madol? And what were the measuring devices they used to achieve such precision?

I would like to see some evidence that relates to the most extreme cases rather than shallow evidence about how to cut limestone with sand and copper (pun intended

Thanks in advance

I applaud your willingness to learn after your rather unseccessful thread from yesterday. I'm no researcher so i'll leave that to the pros here.

Good luck in your quest for knowledge my friend.

originally posted by: Kukri
I applaud your willingness to learn after your rather unseccessful thread from yesterday. I'm no researcher so i'll leave that to the pros here.

Good luck in your quest for knowledge my friend.

Lol thank you mate, what do you mean by unsuccessful? I have my own ideas, I wasn't trying to convince anyone, just explaining my pov (I guess you are referring to ChaoticOrder's post on Dark Matter).

EDIT: oh if you mean unsuccesful as "I was unable to make my point" then sure you are right.

originally posted by: Mastronaut

originally posted by: Kukri
I applaud your willingness to learn after your rather unseccessful thread from yesterday. I'm no researcher so i'll leave that to the pros here.

Good luck in your quest for knowledge my friend.

Lol thank you mate, what do you mean by unsuccessful? I have my own ideas, I wasn't trying to convince anyone, just explaining my pov (I guess you are referring to ChaoticOrder's post on Dark Matter).

EDIT: oh if you mean unsuccesful as "I was unable to make my point" then sure you are right.

Sorry Mastro i confused with Formofthelord and his recent thread om the caves at Ajanta.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

i'll have to go catch up on that thread as it got left behind on my end.

Anyway apart from that screwup i hope you get some good research material going here it should prove to be an interesting read.


ETA: This is the first item i found in my search to help you out. Something to browse over while waiting for the research gurus to show up.
www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk...
www.reshafim.org.il...
imgarcade.com...

The details of the stone work in such places show a technology of some kind was used to cut and shape these stones....
The regularity,tight fit, and the absolutely perfect geometry of some examples preclude any chisel work and show that some form of machining was done to produce them.
Perfect bore holes and absolutely square corners etc...do not lend themselves to copper or even meteoric iron tools.....
The is an Obleisk in Egypt which lies unfinished in a quarry....why...because the tool they were using to form the top point put too much pressure on the stone and broke it......
The obelisk remains with three sides cut and the bottom un detached from it native rock......
An Advanced Civilisation was destroyed by catastrophic circumstances 12000 years ago more or less....and this wasn't the first time either....

originally posted by: Kukri

Thanks for the links I'll check them!

originally posted by: stirling
The details of the stone work in such places show a technology of some kind was used to cut and shape these stones....
The regularity,tight fit, and the absolutely perfect geometry of some examples preclude any chisel work and show that some form of machining was done to produce them.
Perfect bore holes and absolutely square corners etc...do not lend themselves to copper or even meteoric iron tools.....
The is an Obleisk in Egypt which lies unfinished in a quarry....why...because the tool they were using to form the top point put too much pressure on the stone and broke it......
The obelisk remains with three sides cut and the bottom un detached from it native rock......
An Advanced Civilisation was destroyed by catastrophic circumstances 12000 years ago more or less....and this wasn't the first time either....

I don't have prejudices so I am willing to accept ancient advanced civilizations, but I would like to see what the scientific community has produced. I saw most of those artifacts, what I didn't see are the reproductions and the specifics of the trials on the base of which most people decide it's kind of a settled argument.
On the other side that material can be convincing enough that certain things are explained satisfyingly.

originally posted by: stirling
The details of the stone work in such places show a technology of some kind was used to cut and shape these stones....
The regularity,tight fit, and the absolutely perfect geometry of some examples preclude any chisel work and show that some form of machining was done to produce them.
Perfect bore holes and absolutely square corners etc...do not lend themselves to copper or even meteoric iron tools.....
The is an Obleisk in Egypt which lies unfinished in a quarry....why...because the tool they were using to form the top point put too much pressure on the stone and broke it......
The obelisk remains with three sides cut and the bottom un detached from it native rock......
An Advanced Civilisation was destroyed by catastrophic circumstances 12000 years ago more or less....and this wasn't the first time either....

They used band saws made of copper to carve stone. It would be quite simple to mark out circle shapes in wood using something similar to a compass set. Mark out a circle on a piece of wood, use a band saw to remove the edges. Attach the band saw to the circumference of your cylinder block of wood and you have a circular drill. Add a few nails to keep everything in place and you have a circular drill.

originally posted by: stormcell

originally posted by: stirling
The details of the stone work in such places show a technology of some kind was used to cut and shape these stones....
The regularity,tight fit, and the absolutely perfect geometry of some examples preclude any chisel work and show that some form of machining was done to produce them.
Perfect bore holes and absolutely square corners etc...do not lend themselves to copper or even meteoric iron tools.....
The is an Obleisk in Egypt which lies unfinished in a quarry....why...because the tool they were using to form the top point put too much pressure on the stone and broke it......
The obelisk remains with three sides cut and the bottom un detached from it native rock......
An Advanced Civilisation was destroyed by catastrophic circumstances 12000 years ago more or less....and this wasn't the first time either....

They used band saws made of copper to carve stone. It would be quite simple to mark out circle shapes in wood using something similar to a compass set. Mark out a circle on a piece of wood, use a band saw to remove the edges. Attach the band saw to the circumference of your cylinder block of wood and you have a circular drill. Add a few nails to keep everything in place and you have a circular drill.

In South America and Egypt, no band saws. Slabbing saws, and they weren't pure copper, of that we can be sure given what we know about their metallurgy. In Egypt, the tools were bronze.

Core drills made of copper alloy (S. America) or bronze (Egypt) tube with sand for abrasive. Chisels also of these alloys.

The construction stones were roughed out using pounding stones then smoothed with chisels, rubbing stones, and sand.

In Egypt, granite obelisks were quarried using pounding stones and (it is likely) small fires to weaken the stone.

There's really no question about this, since we can see all over the Aswan quarry (and indeed, under and beside the unfinished obelisk,) the marks left behind by the pounders.

In addition, scores of diorite pounding stones can be found right there at the quarry.

Harte

I can think of several was to move the stones.
But for the life of me I can not see how they cut them so precise.

originally posted by: grayghost
I can think of several was to move the stones.
But for the life of me I can not see how they cut them so precise.

What, exactly, is so precise about them?

Harte

a reply to: Harte

I have never see any of these stones.
But the question is always there as to how they were made so precise.
So in assuming the experts know what they are talking about.
As to whether they are or not precise I do not know.

originally posted by: grayghost
a reply to: Harte

I have never see any of these stones.
But the question is always there as to how they were made so precise.
So in assuming the experts know what they are talking about.
As to whether they are or not precise I do not know.

I think the "experts" you're relying on are ancient aliens hosts that have a monetary interest in exaggerating this precision.

Harte

I think ancients had some technoques we arent aware of. I find it interesting that there are many legends of the ancients getting help from space people as well.

originally posted by: FormOfTheLord
I think ancients had some technoques we arent aware of. I find it interesting that there are many legends of the ancients getting help from space people as well.

What legends would those be? Please provide a source (a real source, not YouTube) for these legends...

Thanks everyone for the inputs, but before going wild into the precision of cuts in the actual stones, I would like to see the trials done to say that work is doable with copper tools.
Personally find it hard to think that naturally occurring sharp crystals (quartz, emeralds, other hard stones) or meteoritic iron couldn't exist at all when iron smelting wasn't known. So I don't necessarily see the need for advanced technologies because the tools would have been the very precious secrets of the masons given their uniqueness.

However I never see mentioning "This cut could have been done with iron tools" for bronze-age civilizations and it sounds strange because we know iron has been used before being "dominated". Also naturally occurring hard-crystals could have been used more or less like the arrow tips in obsidian tools, but the rarity of the jewels made them a rather precious item that it was never just abandoned, maybe converted, and surely not used in the far past from hunter gatherers.

The level of precision I see in the images of some of the stones is really difficult to achieve with those working and measuring tools, I am pretty sure that legitimate engineers had a say in that not only ancient alien theorists. That's why I would like to see a replica of those works, since it's claimed to have been done.

Here's another link i think you'll find informative Mastronaut. Still looking for some video of the techniques though.
www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk...

ETA:And another:
www.ancient-origins.net...

What precision are you referring to? Every single example of ancient stonework I have ever seen tested, is not 'precise' at all. There are always variances, and they are always within the range of what you would expect to see given the tools and methods used in their construction.

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
What precision are you referring to? Every single example of ancient stonework I have ever seen tested, is not 'precise' at all. There are always variances, and they are always within the range of what you would expect to see given the tools and methods used in their construction.

For example the Sacsayhuaman wall; the dry stones technique in general requires the surfaces of the stones to be rather flat and fitting to a rather high degree of precision. I know not all are "alien level" precision, but we have to also assume that some have been displaced by earthquakes across a rather long time.

IIRC you did some experiments about this, do you happen to have photographs of some?

They only look that way from the front.

They back-filled the other side.


Harte