Pyramid Older than Civilization

[TragicMonkey]

If global pyramidization is evidence of aliens, what then are Mound^WPs evidence of? They too exist around the world. Are they evidence of less technologically advanced aliens or of simple humans just using the materials to hand?

That somewhere out there is a planet with lots of ancient Almond Joys?

 

[Thermal]

Absolutely. Their builders were as smart and inventive as the engineers who later built cathedrals and skyscrapers, they were just working with a smaller number of materials and techniques because knowledge is cumulative.

It always annoys me when ignorant people insist ancient peoples couldn't possibly have built pyramids or whatever, so aliens must have helped them, usually just because they can't personally work out how they did it. Well maybe the builders were just smarter and more ingenious than you, did you consider that possibility?

I hear that. When I see ancient architecture, I find it so inspiring that the builders had to be so determined and damned clever and innovative to have pulled it off. It's insulting to dismiss it as "they were too dumb, so...aliens". No way. The pyramids at Giza and worldwide are a standing testament to human willpower.

Eta: on my construction sites, we are often faced with some task that seems impossible to pull off for one technical/practical reason or other. Our attitude is to "get Egyptian" on the mother ******, not to wish for alien guidance.

Eta2: and that's why I have an incredibly short fuse for Apollo Hoax advocates. We showed, in real time, just how daunting a challenge humans could tackle with (relatively) shoestring technology, and the bastards still won't accept it

 

[theprestige]

In fairness, they did have some concept of arches to displace weight over open rooms. The structure in question was scanned, and a big ol' 10 meter square chamber was believed to have been found?

Doorframes with square lintels are significantly less effective at supporting weight and distributing load than curved archways. Developing arches (as opposed to square lintels) means doing significantly more with less. You can build taller structures, using less materials. That's the distinction being made. "Some concept of arches" meaning square lintels doesn't cover the quantum leap forward in engineering represented by actual arches in construction.

 

[theprestige]

Eta: on my construction sites, we are often faced with some task that seems impossible to pull off for one technical/practical reason or other. Our attitude is to "get Egyptian" on the mother ******, not to wish for alien guidance.

Stack huge blocks of stone until the structure is stable?

 

[Thermal]

Doorframes with square lintels are significantly less effective at supporting weight and distributing load than curved archways. Developing arches (as opposed to square lintels) means doing significantly more with less. You can build taller structures, using less materials. That's the distinction being made. "Some concept of arches" meaning square lintels doesn't cover the quantum leap forward in engineering represented by actual arches in construction.

Conceded, I should have specified that I was thinking of vaults, not arches. The wording made it seem overly simplistic, and I have great reverence for getting buildings airborne:

You're a stone mason. You haven't yet invented arches, flying buttresses, domes, concrete or anything else a modern stone mason takes for granted:all you know how to do is pile one stone on top of another.

 

[Steve]

Absolutely. Their builders were as smart and inventive as the engineers who later built cathedrals and skyscrapers, they were just working with a smaller number of materials and techniques because knowledge is cumulative.

It always annoys me when ignorant people insist ancient peoples couldn't possibly have built pyramids or whatever, so aliens must have helped them, usually just because they can't personally work out how they did it. Well maybe the builders were just smarter and more ingenious than you, did you consider that possibility?

IMO the builders of large ancient structures were smarter than probably 90% of the humans alive today.

 

[Thermal]

Stack huge blocks of stone until the structure is stable?

What? No, of course not. We'd bury servants with a dead aristocrat and praise Ra. Wassa matter with you?

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

IMO the builders of large ancient structures were smarter than probably 90% of the humans alive today.

More likely the designers of large ancient structures were smarter than probably 90% of the humans alive today. The 90% just followed orders for the glory of whatever god the 10% had conned them into believing in. Same as today

 

[novaphile]

Note that a pyramid being 'older than civilisation' is not possible.

Because, people need to have spare time to be able to build large structures.

It seems to be that the sequence goes like this:

1. civilisation
2. agriculture
3. spare time (caused by the effectiveness of agriculture)
4. monuments

Before agriculture, everyone is spending all their time finding sufficient food every day, and there's no time left over.

 

[angrysoba]

Not sure why people are still talking as though this is a pyramid.

It isn't. It's a volcano with some monuments arranged on the top dating back a couple of thousand years.

There are some amusing things around this...

[Natawidjaja et al] apparently found a coin, which they prefer to call an “amulet,” in a layer that they’ve dated to over 7,000 years BP. The problem is, this is a coin minted between 1914 and 1945. The stark similarity between the alleged “amulet” and the modern coin image has not dissuaded Natawidjaja et al in the least. They conclude it’s not a coin from a little over 100 years ago, rather an amulet of perhaps 5200 BCE. Why so similar? Because the Dutch modeled their coins after ancient amulets, silly.

Link

 

[angrysoba]

Note that a pyramid being 'older than civilisation' is not possible.

Because, people need to have spare time to be able to build large structures.

It seems to be that the sequence goes like this:

1. civilisation
2. agriculture
3. spare time (caused by the effectiveness of agriculture)
4. monuments

Before agriculture, everyone is spending all their time finding sufficient food every day, and there's no time left over.

Not quite true, although that is the general trend.

There are certainly monuments that seem to predate agriculture in parts of the world.

I think Gobleki Tepe is supposed to predate agriculture, and maybe the early versions of Stonehenge, and I think Poverty Point in North America.

Some of this is from memory, though, so I could be wrong.

 

[angrysoba]

A recent book by Graeber and Wengrow spends a lot of pages debunking the simplistic idea that human civilization moved through a uniform progression. They point out that humans have often been seasonal. There are times when food is plentiful and times of the year when groups of people gathered in particular places which is when they would have been able to build monuments.

This is apparently a well-recognized phenomenon among anthropologists and archeologists but according to G and W gets left out of popular histories such as those of Diamond, Harari and Pinker.

That said their own book has had its fair share of criticism for their attempts to insert their own political agenda.

 

[Steve]

More likely the designers of large ancient structures were smarter than probably 90% of the humans alive today. The 90% just followed orders for the glory of whatever god the 10% had conned them into believing in. Same as today

Well if you want to be pedantic.....

 

[Lithrael]

Isn't this the one where they're trying to get people interested in "excavating" based on ground survey stuff that shows low density areas completely consistent with volcanic tubes/vaults? And they've got a few non-vulcanologist paleo guys going 'nooo look how much like a rectangle it is it's gotta be man maaaade'

 

[smartcooky]

I love the simple explanation for why so many cultures built pyramid shaped structures:


"Everything else that they tried, fell over."


Cool eh?

Yes, and in fact, the Egyptians learned fairly early on that there is an optimum angle that the walls need to be at... too shallow and the base is too big, requiring ****-loads of blocks to get any height. Too steep and the walls collapse (beautifully illustrated by the "bent" pyramid)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bent_Pyramid

So not only did many cultures build pyramids, they were forced to build them in similar ratios of height to base because of engineering constraints.

 

[Steve]

Yes, and in fact, the Egyptians learned fairly early on that there is an optimum angle that the walls need to be at... too shallow and the base is too big, requiring ****-loads of blocks to get any height. Too steep and the walls collapse (beautifully illustrated by the "bent" pyramid)

So not only did many cultures build pyramids, they were forced to build them in similar ratios of height to base because of engineering constraints.

So it wasn't because the space dudes taught every culture the same technology? I'm shattered I tell you, shattered!!!

 

[Lithrael]

There are certainly monuments that seem to predate agriculture in parts of the world.

I think Gobleki Tepe is supposed to predate agriculture, and maybe the early versions of Stonehenge, and I think Poverty Point in North America.

Ooh, the World of Antiquity guys recently put out a really interesting 45 min video about the background paleonology discoveries around the time and area of Gobekli Tepe. I highly rec watching/listening if you're interested in how much it does and doesn't predate other contemporary developments.

https://youtu.be/T9aH1kQX6d4

He does spend some time just being sassy at Graham Hancock but it's mostly a fascinating look at what we can infer so far, about that period of history.

 

[theprestige]

A recent book by Graeber and Wengrow spends a lot of pages debunking the simplistic idea that human civilization moved through a uniform progression. They point out that humans have often been seasonal. There are times when food is plentiful and times of the year when groups of people gathered in particular places which is when they would have been able to build monuments.

This is apparently a well-recognized phenomenon among anthropologists and archeologists but according to G and W gets left out of popular histories such as those of Diamond, Harari and Pinker.

That said their own book has had its fair share of criticism for their attempts to insert their own political agenda.

The baseline requirement seems to be surplus calories. Once you've sorted out food and shelter on a repeatable, sustainable basis, what do you do with the surplus calories and attendant boredom?

Anyone who proposes that Catal Huyuk predates agriculture must have some cromulent theory of surplus calories that predates agriculture.

 

[angrysoba]

Ooh, the World of Antiquity guys recently put out a really interesting 45 min video about the background paleonology discoveries around the time and area of Gobekli Tepe. I highly rec watching/listening if you're interested in how much it does and doesn't predate other contemporary developments.

https://youtu.be/T9aH1kQX6d4

He does spend some time just being sassy at Graham Hancock but it's mostly a fascinating look at what we can infer so far, about that period of history.

Thanks for that. I haven't quite finished yet, but it's a great video and very informative.

The baseline requirement seems to be surplus calories. Once you've sorted out food and shelter on a repeatable, sustainable basis, what do you do with the surplus calories and attendant boredom?

Anyone who proposes that Catal Huyuk predates agriculture must have some cromulent theory of surplus calories that predates agriculture.

Why that specific place? The specific claim was about agriculture being required for spare time and monuments.

In fact, you can almost certainly have both without agriculture and I suggested Gobekli Tepe may be an example of a monument that pre-dated agriculture.

The video that Lithrael posted is worth watching if you want to know where the surplus calories came from. Post-Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the region became sedentary and built their own dwellings. Unlike previous hunter-gatherers they did not necessarily have to spend so much of their time foraging because wild seeds and berries may have grown in sufficient abundance and there may have been sufficient game. This could be particularly true at times of migration of particular animals. The video suggests that the engravings at Gobekli Tepe may have been information about seasonal migrations of birds and other animals, and that there are examples that pre-date this at other archeological sites. This information is aimed at Graham Hancock who spouted off some theory about how all the technology exhibited at Gobekli Tepe was unheard of prior to its sudden emergence. But it also debunks the theory that agriculture creates settlements, spare time and monuments.

The place you mention, Catal Huyuk, seems to have been created a couple of thousand years after Gobleki Tepe, which means that agriculture would have had plenty of time to develop in the interim.

 

[shemp]

New evidence strongly suggests Indonesia's Gunung Padang is oldest known pyramid

Well, if phys.org says it's true, it must be true! Checkmate, skeptics!

P.S.: It's just yet another report based on Natawidjaja's paper.