Ancient flying machines? Were they Zeppelins?

Most on here have probably heard of the Nazca lines.

en.wikipedia.org...

A bunch of simple drawings laid out on a large landscape in Peru, of such scale that the picture itself can only be viewed from the air.

There is also lots of discussion about possible truly ancient cultures, from the ice age. Ranging from having built the Great Pyramid, to being the source of the walls found all around the world, built from very large, irregularly shaped, interlocking blocks. Often the stones quarried from miles and miles away.

A simple way to carry them would be by use of a zeppelin. The Hindenburg, for example, was considered to have a lift of 511,500 pounds. Although I don't know what its own mass was (hopefully less than 511,500 pounds.)

www.airships.net...



But here is the thing that makes this an interesting discussion:

The German Zeppelins of World War I were actually constructed using cow intestines to hold the hydrogen.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

How hard would it be for an ancient culture to get access to cow intestines?

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Along time ago some dude theorised that they made the world's first hot air balloons... other people said they may have had gliders. Both interesting ideas.

I want to add to the theory:

Hydrogen can be made simply by putting two electrically charged wires into water. And if they managed to create even a little bit of it, and see what it could do, they would probably have refined the process over time until it gave them greater and greater purities. (Even if they didn't fully understand the scientific basis for what was happening.... just like with other alchemical technologies the ancients sometimes figured out, such as alcohol.)


From there, if they knew to use cow bladders/intestine for containment, they'd be set. I think most ancient cultures knew that bladders were the best part of an animal to contain a liquid (or presumably also a gas.) Eskimos sometimes used them in boat building, and lots of hunter gatherer tribes would use them for water storage (as gross as that sounds to a modern listener). Using some kind of animal part would probably be what they would go to first (and fortunately turn out to be right.)

I don't think we're diving too deep into science fiction here. Other than that nobody in written history has ever been observed to use zeppelins.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

there is a lot more to " building zeplins " than :

" we can manufacture goldbeaters skin "

yes - pretty much all ancient cultures could utilise animal intestines - for a variety of purposes

but a typical pre-war [WWI ] craft used > 200 thousand cattle to produce its gas bags

granted - a smaller craft with limited crew payload would require far mess

and how does you " ancient culture " generate // collect hydrogen or helium - on the scale needed

lifting one man [ 70 kg ] requires approx 75 cubic meters of hydrogen [ the most efficient lift gas ]

PS - the above calculation = in my head so its only a ball park guess - but - its a gig volume required

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

A bunch of simple drawings laid out on a large landscape in Peru, of such scale that the picture itself can only be viewed from the air.

Actually, some are made on the side of mountains and others can be seen from nearby mountains. Not ruling out OBEs either. Or mathematics.

Scaled up drawings, surveying by line of sight.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Great OP. Occam's razor always wins!

a reply to: intrptr

Maybe they had really long rope to help keep the lines correct relative to the overall drawing and then counted paces based on some mathematical ratios to a smaller drawing.

Or they were advanced extraterrestrials who were just not very good at drawing pictures in dirt using their spaceship's stylist ray.

a reply to: dfnj2015

Or they were advanced extraterrestrials who were just not very good at drawing pictures in dirt using their spaceship's stylist ray.

Many of the lines appear 'tramped' into the landscape, like people walked around and around at night with torches... in ritual costume, singing, celebrating their "Gods".

Some of the 'lines' are made with stones.

images

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Its funny.... you dont need to go back thousands of years!

Most people dont know about Charles Dellschau.

Imho this is the major key. watch the whole vid and tell me what you think!

From watching the heat waves rise from fires, it is not very far out to assume that ancient people could have designed devices to take them aloft for a period of time.

Simple procedures of stitching together animal skins, simple plant matter weaving or fabric, if it was available, to create a hot air aerial apparatus, which may have been their high tech flying technology of the day.

Slowly taking them aloft then slowly landing as the air cooled.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous


How hard would it be for an ancient culture to get access to cow intestines?

In the Nazca desert? Probably pretty hard.

Human intestines, on the other hand, may have been easier to get ...

It could have been quite easy to see the Nazca lines from above as there are supposed to have been made around 200 to 300 ad and from a film I saw a couple of years ago China had man carrying kites over 2000 years ago.

The Nazca lines were not done with the porpose of beeing seen from above.. thats Däniken phantasy LALA-land..
..they are ritualistic procession lines.

www.viewzone.com...

originally posted by: eManym
From watching the heat waves rise from fires, it is not very far out to assume that ancient people could have designed devices to take them aloft for a period of time.

Simple procedures of stitching together animal skins, simple plant matter weaving or fabric, if it was available, to create a hot air aerial apparatus, which may have been their high tech flying technology of the day.

Slowly taking them aloft then slowly landing as the air cooled.

Admittedly, hot air does make more sense than hydrogen. Much easier to contain too.

Dare I go so far as to suggest the possibility of "dragon balloons"? A flying warship, perhaps using greek fire to rain flaming terror down from above?

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

A bunch of simple drawings laid out on a large landscape in Peru, of such scale that the picture itself can only be viewed from the air.

Actually, some are made on the side of mountains and others can be seen from nearby mountains. Not ruling out OBEs either. Or mathematics.

Scaled up drawings, surveying by line of sight.

I'm not going to say they couldn't make the lines. But why do it?

Would people really want to put that much effort into something and get no benefit from it?

But building landmarks for air navigation is actually something that happened in the early 20th century, before more advanced means were available.

An example is when the US Post office had its own airforce for a while, used to transport mail. They built concrete arrows on the ground to help the pilots find where they were going.

sometimes-interesting.com...

originally posted by: anti72
The Nazca lines were not done with the porpose of beeing seen from above.. thats Däniken phantasy LALA-land..
..they are ritualistic procession lines.

www.viewzone.com...

Why can't they be both?

Why do people automatically assume that if any ritual is involved in something, it must therefore have been there 100% for purely ritual and/or religious purposes.

It can't be like when ancient swordsmiths would chant long prayers as they made swords (which actually served the purpose of helping them time how long to keep the fire going, and for other steps in the process.) ???

There would need to be a ritual, or how would the people making the lines even remember where to walk, and what order to do things in?

But long after the lines no longer had any purpose, the rituals could have continued anyway.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous


If enough of those big jungle leaves are glued together using tree sap, hot-air zeppelins were possible?

Why would anyone use leaves? They would get dried out by the hot air and then fail.

But the contruction process depends on what design you're going with. The Hydrogen Zeppelins of World War I were not actually giant balloons. More like a big bag, full of thousands of small balloons. Each balloon separately and independently giving lift.

But you need a lot of those balloons to get much lift. It would be a major project (but so is building a wall out of giant stones.)

Hydrogen is easy to discover by accident. If you build a basic battery say using a lemon (low voltage on its own, but you can stack several into a pile if you want more power.)

www.education.com...

And you put two wires connected to the positive and negative ends into some water, oxygen will begin to form by one of the wires, and hydrogen forms by the other.

Not a hard thing to discover by pure accident.






For a hot air balloon, though, I think you can't use lots of small balloons. It needs to be one giant balloon. But also it's easier to contain hot air than it is to contain hydrogen. So you don't have to necessarily build it entirely out of cow intestines/bladders. (Hydrogen has a tendency to gradually seep through most materials.)

Of course, I think you also get less lift per cubic meter of balloon.

(I try to put educational links into topics when I start them. That way even if you find the premise to be absurd, you won't feel like your time was completely wasted.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous


Helium is under the earth in HUGE quantities.
www.post-gazette.com...

The article seems to be saying Helium is a rare earth element, but abundant in a few places, if you have the right kind of stones to help trap it.


Helium is a "noble gas" which means it doesn't react much with other elements to form any kinds of compounds. So being lighter than air, most of it escaped from Earth already. (Even though in outer space it is one of the most abundant elements of all.)

The Earth's hydrogen didn't escape because it reacted with Oxygen to make water, and with a number of elements to become part of rock formations and such.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous


How hard would it be for an ancient culture to get access to cow intestines?

Excessively difficult. The only large animal there is the llama. The nearest cow-like animal is on the northern plains of North America. Real cows were in Europe.