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Merged Their Return

Elizabeth I said:
So - this is a real question, as I'm not aware of how these items are configured - the jug, or for that matter, the alabaster pitcher, is shaped as a rounded object with a cylindrical hole drilled down the middle? Not very useful for holding much, if so.

Are "hand drills" included in your definition of "modern technology"? Because they have been around since the ancient Egyptians. What kind of metal was used to make these drills that could shaped the dreaded andesite? Was the metal beyond the skills of ancient peoples to create?
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The outside can be turned down on a simple lathe.

Water, sand, and a hard wood dowel rod + a sturdy bow WILL drill through just about anything, if only slowly.

Round stone edges are easy. It is the inner square sides that offer difficulty.
 
King of the Americas said:
Drill me a 3 face corner...and lets compare your corner to those at Puma Punku.

You may use any size drill bit with a carbide tip to save you time. But you have to drill 'stone', and create a 90 angle corner.


I am warning you, 'rounded inner corners' are in your future...
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But I don't have the same amount of centuries of history and knowledge in stone cutting as the builders of Puma Punku did. I only have the design skills to visualise ways they could have done it.

But besides that, I wasn't saying only use drills. I was saying they could have used drills to remove the bulk of the stone and then finished it off with chisels and abrasive straight edges. It was your suggestion that drills could be used to drill out the hard stone of the Egyptian vase (relatively) easily, I was simply describing a way to similarly utilise the (relative) ease of drilling in order to speed up the process of cutting vast amounts of stone out.
 
Stray Cat said:
What "different" technique would that be?

Maybe drill a series of round holes and then finish it all off straightening up the edges with the chisel or abrasive straight edge?
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When you make the corner, chipping out one face is common, if not unavoidable.

What happens is there an uneven amount of debris, that causes an uneven amount of pressure upon the strike, and then one of the faces gets bruised, then your corner doesn't look true.

Inner corners are tough, without really hard, fine, flat chisels.
 
Stray Cat said:
But I don't have the same amount of centuries of history and knowledge in stone cutting as the builders of Puma Punku did. I only have the design skills to visualise ways they could have done it.

...
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Whatever the Pumu Punku-ians had, it is gone. 'We' don't have it anymore, it has been LOST.
 
King of the Americas said:
Whatever the Pumu Punku-ians had, it is gone. 'We' don't have it anymore, it has been LOST.
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We may not know what their exact technique was, but that doesn't mean it went up in the sky with the Atlanteans who have since been buzzing the earth like a bunch of teenage guys harassing a pretty girl who happens to be unfortunate enough to be walking alone.
 
King of the Americas said:
When you make the corner, chipping out one face is common, if not unavoidable.

What happens is there an uneven amount of debris, that causes an uneven amount of pressure upon the strike, and then one of the faces gets bruised, then your corner doesn't look true.
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I'm sure that if you were a 6th generation master stone mason who had taken on such a job, the skills required to do the job although difficult, would not be impossible. We have a viable method and obvious master stone masons... There is no need to imagine long lost advanced technology.

King of the Americas said:
Inner corners are tough, without really hard, fine, flat chisels.
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To you and me they may be tough... To the master masons of Puma Punku not so much.

BTW, I also think you may be overestimating the accuracy of some of those stones. Some are definitely better and more accurate than others... just as you'd expect if they were individually hand carved.
 
King of the Americas said:
Whatever the Pumu Punku-ians had, it is gone. 'We' don't have it anymore, it has been LOST.
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Many ancient primitive skills have been lost... it's really nothing more than that we outgrew them and had no further need to remember them.

Somewhere along the way we also lost the instructions on how to build and use Stonehenge here in the UK... But it's OK because we can look on iCal to see when the solstice is... We no longer need to watch the sunrises to work it out.
 
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Stray Cat said:
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To you and me they may be tough... To the master masons of Puma Punku not so much.

BTW, I also think you may be overestimating the accuracy of some of those stones. Some are definitely better and more accurate than others... just as you'd expect if they were individually hand carved.
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Find a piece of copper, sharpen it, then use the point to make a mark on a piece of andesite.

THEN come back here and tell me what you learned.

Master masons or not, this work could NOT be accomplished with period tools.
 
Stray Cat said:
Many ancient primitive skills have been lost... it's really nothing more than that we outgrew them and had no further need to remember them.

...
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We have been working stone with hammer and chisels for thousands of years. With progress, our tools have gotten harder and stronger. Making Puma Punku NOW with modern/advanced tools would be a difficult time consuming process. Trying to do it with period tools would prove impossible...

You simply can not make those cuts with copper tools.

The margin of error that I've seen would indicate the exact opposite of individually crafted stones.
 
King of the Americas said:
We have been working stone with hammer and chisels for thousands of years. With progress, our tools have gotten harder and stronger. Making Puma Punku NOW with modern/advanced tools would be a difficult time consuming process. Trying to do it with period tools would prove impossible...

You simply can not make those cuts with copper tools.

The margin of error that I've seen would indicate the exact opposite of individually crafted stones.
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Yet you haven't shown that you've actually seen any margin of error. Science it quantitative. That margin you mentioned, plus or minus how many thousandths of an inch?
 
King of the Americas said:
Find a piece of copper, sharpen it, then use the point to make a mark on a piece of andesite.
THEN come back here and tell me what you learned.
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Why?
I'm not part of an ancient civilisation that sees temples to gods as important enough to dedicate such time, effort and devotion to.

Hitting a piece of stone with a piece of metal isn't going to instill in me, the generations of knowledge and dedication to their craft that the skilled people of Puma Punku had.

King of the Americas said:
Master masons or not, this work could NOT be accomplished with period tools.
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And yet the other civilisations were carving the same types of stones at the same time with no trouble... If it's just a matter of straight lines (and some of them not very straight, looking at the photos), then your inability to recognise the ingenuity and skill of human craftsmen over the centuries is astounding.
 
King of the Americas said:
We have been working stone with hammer and chisels for thousands of years. With progress, our tools have gotten harder and stronger. Making Puma Punku NOW with modern/advanced tools would be a difficult time consuming process. Trying to do it with period tools would prove impossible...
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Show the evidence for this, rather than merely repeating your assertion.
You simply can not make those cuts with copper tools.
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Show the evidence for this, rather than merely repeating your assertion.
The margin of error that I've seen would indicate the exact opposite of individually crafted stones.
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A template is exactly what would be used to ensure individually crafted stones were cut to a required precision.

It is exactly the reason for USING templates in a process where multiple copies of a standard are required.
 
King of the Americas said:
We have been working stone with hammer and chisels for thousands of years. With progress, our tools have gotten harder and stronger. Making Puma Punku NOW with modern/advanced tools would be a difficult time consuming process. Trying to do it with period tools would prove impossible...
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I'm quite sure that the people who made it (using their period tools) found it difficult and time consuming too... but with projects such as Puma Punku, that's kind of the point of building them. The Empire State Building didn't have to be as tall as it is... it was a symbol of prosperity and the building of it was responsible for finding methods of overcoming constructions problems... That's how things develop, by pushing the boundaries.

King of the Americas said:
The margin of error that I've seen would indicate the exact opposite of individually crafted stones.
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What margin of error are you looking at?
Have you ever been there?
If not, you have no better experience than I have (looking at a selection of photographs of what are probably the most impressive bits of carving).
Do you know what tolerances the builders of Puma Punku were working to?

There are some stones I can see definite chisel marks on... admittedly I don't know if those are the andesite stone you are talking about, but as we've already mentioned, the varying hardnesses of different stones is quite irrelevant when we know that all types of stone found there can be carved by tools they had available, by looking at various examples of andesite carving from around the world.
 
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