'Lost Civilisations'

[King of the Americas]

Nope. Wrong again. But consistent. Your qualifications to understand the techniques involved in carving stone have been challenged, and you have yet to demonstrate that you possess any such qualifications, even at the most rudimentary level. Your opinion isn't even an argument. Your claim based on incredulity isn't even an argument. Your position is unequivocal, unsupported nonsense.

I am going to stop revealing your posts...

 

[King of the Americas]

...

You have ignored about a dozen other posts with information on 4 possible carving techniques, and lots of information about the stone that you pretend to be interested in. Why do you keep asking questions if you won't read the answers?

I just searched the link provided. No "Puma Punku" therein...not in the table of contents and not in the index...

 

[Vortigern99]

To which link are you referring?

 

[punshhh]

Masonry with fitted stones is nothing high-tech, new, or impossible. Pre-columbian Americans did it too. You rough the rock to shape, try it, then refine the fit, try it again, then refine it some more.

Yes I know, these are also puzzling, however they are generally smaller stones. Which would be considerably easier.
I am a cabinetmaker and fit pieces of wood together accurately. It becomes increasingly difficult the larger the pieces are to a dramatic extent. I would say exponential at least.

In my opinion to use the refine and fit method you mention it would become extremely difficult with stones over 2 or 3 tonnes, even with an unlimited labour force and highly skilled craftsmen.

The Egyptian stuff you're talking about, I presume was using rocks cut to very regular shapes (like large bricks).

I was looking at stones which were irregular shapes, often there would be a corner along an edge. One stone in particular near the current entrance to the pyramid of Cheops was over 20 feet long 10 feet wide and 3ft deep.
This would weight over 40 tons.

I'm no authority, but I think the notion that the stones were always "perfectly" fitted is a myth. (I'm not even sure of how you'd define a "perfect" fit compared to one that is simply very good.)

To me a perfect fit on something this size would be no gaps over 1 or 1.5 millimeters.

On many of the blocks approximately over twenty tons in the sphinx temple are fitted far more accurately. I could see no perceptable gaps, I would say over .02mm wide. You certainly wouldn't be able to push a razor blade between them. Yet the sphinz temple is the oldest building on the site.

I am not claiming any extra terrestrial involvement here, my point is that they had technology capable of constructing buildings out of rock which we would be hard pressed to reproduce today, with the most advanced technology at our disposal.

On one of the oldest buildings in the world.

 

[Andy_Ross]

What is so hard about piling up stones?
What is hard about cutting ans shaping stone?

In the UK we have Cathedrals dating abck to the 10th century, they have big stones cut and polished by hand that fit together with a high accuracy.
Visit any ruined Roman city and look at the size of some of the stonework. Big multi ton blocks in columns, aquaducts and buildings. How do you think they did it?

What method are you proposing for the Egyptians that doesn't involve cutting, chipping and grinding?

Show us some pitures of these impossible pyramid stones.

 

[punshhh]

What is so hard about piling up stones?
What is hard about cutting ans shaping stone?

In the UK we have Cathedrals dating abck to the 10th century, they have big stones cut and polished by hand that fit together with a high accuracy.
Visit any ruined Roman city and look at the size of some of the stonework. Big multi ton blocks in columns, aquaducts and buildings. How do you think they did it?

What method are you proposing for the Egyptians that doesn't involve cutting, chipping and grinding?

Show us some pitures of these impossible pyramid stones.

Yes I've visited all these places their bodgers compaired to the Egyptians.

Unfortunately I had run out of film by the time I got to the pyramids.

I can post photos of some of the stonework at Karnak, but not for a few weeks as they at another address.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Bodgers? define 'bodgers'?
What makes the Egyptian piles of stones any better than Roman, Greek, or Norman piles of stones?

 

[punshhh]

Bodgers? define 'bodgers'?
What makes the Egyptian piles of stones any better than Roman, Greek, or Norman piles of stones?

A bodger is a 19th century chair maker, who lives in the woods and makes chairs out of freshly felled trees using a few simple tools.

In the trade bodger is used to refer to someone who's work is of a low standard. Like someone trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole.

The roman, greek and Norman stones where not very accurately jointed and where mainly cemented with mortar, I'm not certain about the Greeks as I haven't been there myself.

 

[King of the Americas]

To which link are you referring?

YOURS, I think:

http://www.doaks.org/publications/doaks_online_publications/isbn_0-88402-300-1.pdf

 

[GeeMack]

I am going to stop revealing your posts...

Bummer.

Here are a few very simple yes/no questions: Do you have any evidence that the stonework at Puma Punku was done with some kind of alien technology? (Arguments from incredulity and ignorance are not evidence.) Do you have any evidence that those who lived in the area when the monuments were built were so stupid or incompetent that they required alien help to do something that was being done routinely in other parts of the world for a couple thousand years prior? (Again, arguments from incredulity and ignorance are not evidence.) Do you have anything other than your declarations of incredulity to support your claims?

 

[Aepervius]

Yes I know, these are also puzzling, however they are generally smaller stones. Which would be considerably easier.
I am a cabinetmaker and fit pieces of wood together accurately. It becomes increasingly difficult the larger the pieces are to a dramatic extent. I would say exponential at least.

In my opinion to use the refine and fit method you mention it would become extremely difficult with stones over 2 or 3 tonnes, even with an unlimited labour force and highly skilled craftsmen.



I was looking at stones which were irregular shapes, often there would be a corner along an edge. One stone in particular near the current entrance to the pyramid of Cheops was over 20 feet long 10 feet wide and 3ft deep.
This would weight over 40 tons.



To me a perfect fit on something this size would be no gaps over 1 or 1.5 millimeters.

On many of the blocks approximately over twenty tons in the sphinx temple are fitted far more accurately. I could see no perceptable gaps, I would say over .02mm wide. You certainly wouldn't be able to push a razor blade between them. Yet the sphinz temple is the oldest building on the site.

I am not claiming any extra terrestrial involvement here, my point is that they had technology capable of constructing buildings out of rock which we would be hard pressed to reproduce today, with the most advanced technology at our disposal.

On one of the oldest buildings in the world.

There is a pretty much easy technic with stone you can use if you have patience, or a lot of workforce, and that technic is not easily usable with wood.

Think about it I will give you an hint : you can simply find out where the point to rough out are.

Leave your stone rough, sprinkle fine sand in a thin layer at the bottom where stone should go, on the side you can do a light humid sand mortar. Put the stone against the side or against the bottom. Where the stone lies, will there be an imprint. Remove the stone and polish those zone.

There are additional method using cement to fill in the holes, and that cement IIRC is hardly distinguishable from the stone.

The bottom line is that "better than 1.5 mm unreproducible today" is a downright wrong claim spread among some non-archelogical web site and book. It is not that hard with stone, it is time intensive. Which is why instead of making it tight fitting, we simply use a nice layer of cement between stones.

Frankly if it was needed to be mass reproduced , for the right price, it would be *EASY*. But we do not need to ! We have better methods !

 

[Akhenaten]

Leave your stone rough, sprinkle fine sand in a thin layer at the bottom where stone should go, on the side you can do a light humid sand mortar. Put the stone against the side or against the bottom. Where the stone lies, will there be an imprint. Remove the stone and polish those zone.

There are additional method using cement to fill in the holes, and that cement IIRC is hardly distinguishable from the stone.

Bronze Age Engineer's blue.

 

[punshhh]

There is a pretty much easy technic with stone you can use if you have patience, or a lot of workforce, and that technic is not easily usable with wood.

Think about it I will give you an hint : you can simply find out where the point to rough out are.

Leave your stone rough, sprinkle fine sand in a thin layer at the bottom where stone should go, on the side you can do a light humid sand mortar. Put the stone against the side or against the bottom. Where the stone lies, will there be an imprint. Remove the stone and polish those zone.

There are additional method using cement to fill in the holes, and that cement IIRC is hardly distinguishable from the stone.

The bottom line is that "better than 1.5 mm unreproducible today" is a downright wrong claim spread among some non-archelogical web site and book. It is not that hard with stone, it is time intensive. Which is why instead of making it tight fitting, we simply use a nice layer of cement between stones.

Frankly if it was needed to be mass reproduced , for the right price, it would be *EASY*. But we do not need to ! We have better methods !

The 1.5mm gap is my own professional opinion, I don't regard it unreproducible today. Rather without some CNC laser it would be a monumental task to fit two irregular 40 tonne stones that closely.

It would be possible in wood with a CNC router for a piece of the same dimensions, but would be very difficult.

Using the method you describe, imagine the surface area of irregular joint face on four* 40 tonne stones. If scribes are used to rough out the shape you are still going to have irregularities of over 2 or 3cm to polish out.
How many times would the gang of stone movers have to move these stones to get down to a 1.5mm tolerance.

I would estimate over a hundred times per stone, with polishing between tries of a day or so.
I would say it would take about 200 men between 6 months and a year to fit each stone of that size.

* I say four stones as there is one below and three against the sides, I will not include the fourth side as that would be fitted with the following stone.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

As a craftsman myself with a good knowledge of the machinery necessary to perform such a task. It is quite obvious how difficult it would be to fit the stones the way they are fitted.

Wood working isn't masonry.

Why is it obvious that it's something difficult? It sounds like an argument from ignorance: Since I don't know how something was done, it must have been extremely difficult.

Stone masons using hand tools have been fitting stones for a loooong time. It's very labor intensive, so I'll grant you it's "difficult" in the sense that it takes a lot of work, but that's all.

 

[Dinwar]

The 1.5mm gap is my own professional opinion, I don't regard it unreproducible today. Rather without some CNC laser it would be a monumental task to fit two irregular 40 tonne stones that closely.

What is your profession, and why should we care? I ask because you don't understand that highly fossiliferous limestone of the type used in the pyramids cannot be carved "smooth", which means that your "professional opinion" doesn't mean squat when it comes to rock. Which, I must point out, is the topic under consideration.

Second, "monumental task" =/= "impossible". You just admitted that the argument "These people couldn't carve stones this well, therefore they needed advanced technology" is wrong.

Using the method you describe, imagine the surface area of irregular joint face on four* 40 tonne stones. If scribes are used to rough out the shape you are still going to have irregularities of over 2 or 3cm to polish out.

Why? Why wouldn't expert stone carvers, who spent ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day make the stone smoother? The weight is not an issue here; it's a matter of structure, and a homogenous stone block doesn't offer any restrictions to reducing irregularities to 1cm or less.

As I've said before, you could even polish the stone before you fit it. Get some sand and a flat bit of stone (doesn't have to be very big). Rub the flat bit of stone against the big stone, with the sand in between. That'll get it as polished as diorite is giong to get without diamond grit, meaning that irregularities would be on the scale of um rather than 2-3 cm. And if a guy sitting in an office can come up with that in all of thirty seconds, I can only imagine someone who works 10, 12, or 14 hours a day with the stone would come up with a similar idea.

You "ancient advanced tech" types have very little imagination.

I would estimate over a hundred times per stone, with polishing between tries of a day or so.

Where did THAT number come from? Look, have you ever hung a door? After abouit four tries you get a pretty good idea of what needs to be done to make it fit. There's simply no REASON to do it 100 times.

Oh, wait--you're also assuming that expert stone carvers would be so bad at their job as to leave 2-3 cm releaf on "smooth" stone. Never mind; you're basing this on the view that our ancestors were complete helpless morons. Carry on.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

As I have pointed out I was not refering to the stones in the photograph.

So as long as you ignore imperfectly fitted stones, you're baffled by the ability to fit some stones "perfectly"?

I've built stone walls with mortar and dry-stacked stone walls. Even without doing any stone cutting, you occasionally get a really nice fit.

So if you're carving really big stones into big flat rectangular blocks, wouldn't you expect there to be some joints that fit really really well? You probably get some final polishing and fitting just sliding stones that heavy into position.

Again, it's difficult in the sense that it takes a helluva lot of labor, but there's no mystery or need for hypothesizing "lost" technology.

 

[King of the Americas]

So as long as you ignore imperfectly fitted stones, you're baffled by the ability to fit some stones "perfectly"?

...

Again, it's difficult in the sense that it takes a helluva lot of labor, but there's no mystery or need for hypothesizing "lost" technology.

I am personally capable of creating beautiful woodwork. I have made stuff using every piece of equipment our shop class had. I can make beautiful keyed miter joints, or dove-tail ones that would make one weep...

But I don't use those techniques 'all the time'. Sometimes a straight butt joint with a gusset is all that is required.

The point is that they WERE very capable of astonishing stone work, when they were so inclined to employ it.

The level of which, exceeds what can be accomplished today using tools we know they had, and employing them is a conventional manner.

Some other method, a "lost technology" was employed here, and we DON'T know what it was...

 

[SOdhner]

So if you're carving really big stones into big flat rectangular blocks, wouldn't you expect there to be some joints that fit really really well?

Exactly! The implied claim is that they're all perfectly fitted, but I haven't seen support for that. I'm happy to believe that some were fitted well enough to call it perfect, but I doubt this was done all the time (even if it was that wouldn't be proof of any lost technology, but it would be way more interesting).

Is there a non-woo source someone can link to about this, that we can be reasonably sure isn't cherry-picking?

 

[Dinwar]

The point is that they WERE very capable of astonishing stone work, when they were so inclined to employ it.

The level of which, exceeds what can be accomplished today using tools we know they had, and employing them is a conventional manner.

Some other method, a "lost technology" was employed here, and we DON'T know what it was...

And my point, yet again, is that without doing the basic research (ie, reading some peer-reviewed journals at minimum) you simply cannot make any of these claims. You have no evidence other than argument from personal incredulity.

 

[GeeMack]

Some other method, a "lost technology" was employed here, and we DON'T know what it was...

That is an absurdly false statement, and given all the information provided in this thread alone which shows it's false, it can only be attributed to wilfull ignorance or an outright lie. Humans have been capable of stone working meeting or exceeding the tolerances of the work at Puma Punku for thousands of years. We know this. Empirical evidence supports this, your continued demonstrations of lack of qualification, unsupported assertions, and arguments from incredulity notwithstanding. Your position is an expression of contempt and disdain for those skilled and apparently dedicated workers who actually created the monuments. It's demeaning, the equivalent of spitting on their graves in order to bolster a failed argument in favor of alien technology.