Signs to look for, ancient high tec

Suppose that during an archeological dig a simple unmarked granite cube was found of say 5x5x5cm. The archeologist notices that there are two small holes drilled at opposite sides but that they are not alined so he decides to take an xray image of the cube. To his shock upon viewing this xray image it is found that the hole does go straight through the cube but only after making 10 right angle turned inside of the cube before linking to the exit hole. Essentially the interior of the cube consists of straight lines and right angles. Whilst trying to report the find the archeologist finds that the whole dig closed down and military takes over....why?

Because even though we are talking about a simple cube made of granite it represents a technology superior to anything we currently have ie we would not be able to produce the object just described.

Thinking along similar lines I started to think about "simple" objects which indicate advanced technology and here are some.

1, Drilling a small diameter hole into a hard stone is difficult because the drill-bit will have a tendency to break however drilling a "deep" small diameter hole into a hard stone represents advanced technology. This is due to the fact that a long drill bit with a small diameter would be very fragile, we would have difficulty's even doing this today and if such an object was found and reported as bronze age then we would have some real questions about how the hell they did it!

2, Lifting objects weighing several hundred ton and transporting it long distances over difficult terrain. It is fair to say that a civilizations level of technological development can be assessed by the size of the objects they are capable of lifting, the more advanced the more we can and will be able to lift. If objects which weigh several tons are found to have been lifted up a mountain of over a mountain/cliff we need to ask questions. Whilst using modern crane we can lift heavy objects we cant transport them over difficult terrain as it requires roads!

3, Structures consisting of many parts yet the overall object is found to be highly accurate in measurements or geometry. It should be understood that the grater the number blocks a building is built from the less overall accuracy the building will achieve this is due to additive errors. If we find ancient massive structures consisting of vast numbers of components yet resulting in a overall accuracy grater or equal to what we can achieve today with modern surveying/ building techniques it would be worrying!

4, Drilling into hard stone at acute angles, Drilling a hole at 90 degrees to a surface can be done with ease but drilling at acute angles is extremely difficult due to several factors ie uneven pressure on the drill bit, tendency of bit to slip and guiding the drill. If you think this is an easy task try it with a modern diamond core drill and try to drill a hole into a brick wall at an acute angle...actually don't because you will end up in hospital with a broken wrist!

5, Perfect symmetry in "natural" nonlinear carved 3d objects eg a carved face that is found to be perfectly symmetrical to a high degree of accuracy. We could only do this today with computer controlled milling machines so ancient objects that display this feature would be of concern.

6, intricate carving in hard substances which display acute angles (tight corners) at high resolutions in copper and bronze age objects. It should be understood that you cannot drill a 1mm dia hole with a 10mm dia drill bit, you canot carve a sharp corner with a curved tipped chisel, you cannot draw a fine line with a fat tipped felt tip or produce fine writing using a child's jumbo crayon. In other words fine work requires fine tools and the finer the work the smaller the cutting tip and therefore the harder and stronger the material from which the tool is made. A fine tool made from copper will blunt within the first strike of a hammer, a fine tipped chisel made from stone will brake with the first strike of a hammer, blunt tools cannot produce sharp detailed corners etc

Cutting/drilling at high feed rates into hard stone. A drill bit has two actions it both rotates and moves in a linear direction into the object being drilled, the result of these two motions is a spiral like the thread of a screw. We can calculate the speed (feed rate) at which a drill passed through a material by examining the tool marks left in the material. Cutting at high feed rates into hard substances in ancient objects would suggest advanced technology.

Metallic objects with high purity metallurgy. We can make a gold coin with 99.9999% purity gold but if we find ancient objects made from uncommon metals requiring complex extraction or purification techniques it would be a sign of high tec


These are just a few examples of signs we should be looking for whilst searching for ancient high civilizations and you may contribute by suggesting and add other signs as you wish

Also, if one looks for signs of intelligence, then all above examples would fail in finding any.

The reason why we won't find such work of art is that if the technology required to do what you described existed, they wouldn't be so incredibly stupid to drill a few holes and live among stones and clay-pots and then screw up and completely wipe out every bit of technology out of existence after being done with the pointless drilling.

This also raises questions of the same kind around speculating how holes in stones "should look like" if there was an ancient high-tech culture.

it's cool! would you give the picture sir..

reply to post by Nevertheless


You would be assuming they wiped themselves out whilst natural disasters is a consequence of living on this planet!

You also assume that people of all civilizations have the same psychology ie that they are materialistic in their needs whilst even observing peoples of today we find that "spiritual" people don't desire much in the way of material goods. Imagine a whole civilization with those values, would their civilization resemble ours?

Originally posted by cheesy
it's cool! would you give the picture sir..

Much of the above in fact has been found, engineers who have examined the great pyramid which contrary to belief actually has 8 sides have said they could not build a structure which would achieve the same overall accuracy.

I have seen holes drilled into granite block at acute angles which could not be done with a copper bow drill.

4 things

1 - Brute force
2 - Persistence
3 - Lots of time
4 - Skill

Humans are amazing , something being very difficult has never stopped us.

Originally posted by LUXUS
engineers who have examined the great pyramid which contrary to belief actually has 8 sides have said they could not build a structure which would achieve the same overall accuracy.

And their names were.... and the journal they made that claim in is.... or a weblink is....

I have seen holes drilled into granite block at acute angles which could not be done with a copper bow drill.

pic?

Originally posted by PhoenixOD
4 things

1 - Brute force
2 - Persistence
3 - Lots of time
4 - Skill

5. Resourcefulness

Originally posted by LUXUS
Much of the above in fact has been found, engineers who have examined the great pyramid which contrary to belief actually has 8 sides have said they could not build a structure which would achieve the same overall accuracy

I think its very hard for many of us to imagine what it must have been like in ancient times because we have sojourned in a time of very little climate change and are used to a fair amount of stability. However if one looks into historical weather this planet likes to swing from freeze, warm and fry. Man's 'lineage' from Lucy goes back some 4 million years, so coming eventually onto homo sapiens etc we must have experienced, and had a group memory of times of great challenge with volcanic eruptions, higher and lower sea levels, floods / famine, such opposites which forced man to either simply moved to better climes or stay and die. Something often not mentioned is the wild life, we coexisted with some fearsome, very large animals and marine life, I expect the plant life was probably dangerous also. Had people not been intelligent they would never have coped with their environments. I cannot believe, that with our brains we did nothing till we suddenly sprang into constructing the pyramids and Stone Henge etc.

I believe we have had a number of ancient civilisations that have either been totally destroyed by climate change, some natural catestrophe, or warfare. e.g. Earthquakes can suddenly take a ground level considerably higher and also very much lower as in the Atlantic Ocean where cable layers have found a huge drop in the floor from where the cable was originally laid. There is not a huge amount of money for even well known archaelogical sites and probably precious little for anything that rocks the church and book writing scholars. If one is open minded such as Prof Pryor who cheekily suggested that man was farming way earlier than the history books, one would be ridiculed and probably sacked. Archaelogy is changing but where the money comes from to fund it is very fixed.

Lastly the knowledge ancient people had of the cosmos and especially the zodiac - just one example, the knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes, would have taken many thousands of years of observation and rigid record keeping to actually fix these observations in time. This knowledge demonstrates beyond doubt that either this was taught to us or we observed it ourselves but over a very long period of time. If it comes from us that means intelligent, stable civilisation.

Originally posted by LUXUS
You would be assuming they wiped themselves out whilst natural disasters is a consequence of living on this planet!

No. I'm assuming that if we can find pottery and rocks with strange holes in them, that the fantastic unbreakable drills and other equipment shouldn't be completely vanished in a natural disaster when lesser material hasn't.

You also assume that people of all civilizations have the same psychology ie that they are materialistic in their needs

I'm only assuming what you said, i.e. that they were materialistic enough to build fantastic equipment [to drill holes in simple stones]. I give you the benefit of the doubt that those fantastic equipment (and the equipment used to build that equipment - i.e. a lot) would be the only materialistic interest (which is not only extremely improbable but stupid as well) - still, it'd be a materialistic world because of that.

whilst even observing peoples of today we find that "spiritual" people don't desire much in the way of material goods. Imagine a whole civilization with those values, would their civilization resemble ours?

Neither do I, and as much as I like drilling complicated holes in rocks, I still like clean water, food that doesn't kill me, a clean environment, clean clothes, soft bed and a clean home.

The great pyramid was a sonic waterpump. Standpipe, check valve, regulator, sonic amplification chamber, refracting chamber for standing wave. I just wonder what they did with the booms?

reply to post by hellobruce


There is a video on youtube, someone here might recall the name of it in which they interview engineers who have worked in large modern day construction sites and they have said they could not build that today and achieve the same accuracy!

I am progeny; deus ex machina.


Overvoid out. Quotientality 98.7%. Green wall hodling stable, but negative tendrils affecting S.E. negative spin plane. Emphatic probability of true true false ending positive seepage with making temporal pro manifestations well contingent. Accuracy four.

They took my shirt on my last visit. Three days in this hell-hole, and I feel as if my spirit has been dragged through the mud in front of an old west saloon. Temporality can be a real bitch some times. On my last jump I stumbled on the Torah upholder's youtube decrying the talmudic state of Israel. Moses had lain in the street.Elijah is in transit. My coat has been malfunctioning again, but have achieved my task and located a powerful enough yin/yang counter,love has been.

Opaque nullify, right timeframe digress false.,-1. Set coats to four days, negative trueharm. Overvoid. sOne day.



P.S. Just a creative writing exercise, probably not the right forum, maybe not as hi-tec as you would like, but for me, words have always held great power. Maybe some signs in this sci-fi post?? Oh yeah, happy birthday to me today
P.

Originally posted by Nevertheless

I'm only assuming what you said, i.e. that they were materialistic enough to build fantastic equipment [to drill holes in simple stones]. I give you the benefit of the doubt that those fantastic equipment (and the equipment used to build that equipment - i.e. a lot) would be the only materialistic interest (which is not only extremely improbable but stupid as well) - still, it'd be a materialistic world because of that.

Who said it would be "fantastic" technology, It could be just different technology that we just don't use today. So we are told the pyramids were built as tombs and they spent att that time making them but failed to bury any pharaoh in them other then stepped pyramids of inferior construction.

Originally posted by LUXUS
Who said it would be "fantastic" technology, It could be just different technology that we just don't use today.

I said that it would be "fantastic" technology, because to us it would be fantastic technology. What is your problem with that statement?

So we are told the pyramids were built as tombs and they spent att that time making them but failed to bury any pharaoh in them other then stepped pyramids of inferior construction.

I have no idea what your point with this sentence is.
Also, not all pyramids were built as tombs, and not all pyramids have been found before someone else did, and not all pyramids were completed at the proper time.

reply to post by LUXUS


I think it is possible that the more advanced tools made of metals more susceptible to decay may have just broken down, rusted away or been carelessly repurposed/re-forged before any real historian had the chance to record it.

Originally posted by LUXUS
reply to post by hellobruce

 

There is a video on youtube, someone here might recall the name of it in which they interview engineers who have worked in large modern day construction sites and they have said they could not build that today and achieve the same accuracy!

With all due respect, that statement is utter rubbish.
The great pyramid weighs 5.9 million tons, Hoover dam on the other hand is 6.6 million tons, and it was completed in five years, along with all of the excavations in the canyon to prep the site. Which included several huge tunnels some 25. miles of roadbeds, 220 milesof electrical transmission lines , and the condtruction of the forms.
Also 4tunnels 56 ft in dia each almost a mile long were dug to divert the river. and the riverbed was excavated 150' down into bedrock to prep the site. All done 3500 workers and that was in the thirties.

When fallen angels were here on earth manipulating their dna with mankind so they could be gods, they used this divine technology. Why would a civilization with such divine technology disappear? Its not the civilization that disappeared, it was the ones who brought and used the technology that disappeared. Its like if you took a computer to a bunch of primitive people, then took it away. Its not the people that disappeared, it was the computer and its user/designers that disappeared.

Originally posted by punkinworks10

With all due respect, that statement is utter rubbish.
The great pyramid weighs 5.9 million tons, Hoover dam on the other hand is 6.6 million tons, and it was completed in five years, along with all of the excavations in the canyon to prep the site. Which included several huge tunnels some 25. miles of roadbeds, electrical transmission lines , and the condtruction of the forms.

This is true, but you need to consider that there is a far greater deal of precision in the pyramids than is present in the Hoover dam. I'm not saying that we couldn't do it today, but until the recent advent of computers, laser leveling, etc. it would have been a serious undertaking to get a technically eight sided pyramid, which faces only 3/60th degree of error from magnetic north/south(while sitting on the equator, making this measurement more difficult because of the distance) and has a light show of sorts during certain celestial events(solstices and equinoxes) which kept track of those days passing. Especially since the concavity of the sides of the pyramid is not visually apparent on close inspection. In short, we could do this today, but even as little as 100 years ago, it would have been sheer dumb luck that would make it accurate to the degree it is now.

reply to post by Nevertheless


I thought you were implying that the technology need be fantastically complex whilst its my view that it was simple though used tec that for some reason we just haven't managed to recover.

My point about the pyramid not being used as a tomb was to reflect the statement you made about how an advanced civilization could have such things yet live among stones and pottery ie it is as crazy an idea as the pyramid taking 25 years to build and yet they never bothered to use it (apparently).

My view is that there have been advanced civilizations however the technology was not in the hands of the common person but the high priests who kept their secrets among themselves. I view them as living simple lives, dressing simply and being more spiritual then our civilization. They were in possession to technology which allowed them to do things that we would find amazing however the technology was not necessarily highly complex, just different.