Nobody but a few wackos disputes that. Well, well, well. Strong words.

That's right, nobody but a few wackos.

The monoliths at stonehenge - there are those that could weigh 60 tons. And those stones were mined miles off. Cranes that can handle such weights are not mobile - and if they are, they have been built very recently.

Don't be silly. They moved them with labor power. You are clearly uninformed about how simple and easy it is to move large blocks of stones if you have enough labor.

For example the Roman Temple of Jupiter Heliopolis at Baalbek, Lebanon (60 AD),
includes stones of 350 tons surmounted by a podium of three giant blocks of more
than 800 tons each. Another stone there weighs over 970 tons. Baalbek contains
more rock mass than the Great Pyramid. Do you think aliens helped the Romans move 1000-ton blocks? No, they had men with lifetimes of experience supervising large labor crews. Ditto for the Incas.

Phoenician harbor installations included single stones in excess of 400 tons.

Several megalithic sites contain rocks exceeding 150 tons. Great Menhir at Locmariaquer tops 350 tons.

The greek Treasury of Atreus contains a lintel that weighs in at over 120 tons.

In 10th century China 200 ton blocks were used to make bridges (imagine what a trick that was to get them in place on a moving river). The builder left us his memoirs, and they don't mention aliens.

At Teotihuacan there is a 225 ton statue.

Easter Island one piece exceeds 300 tons.

Incas also had blocks exceeding 200 tons. And we have the complete Inca shaping and moving apparatus, except for the ropes, which have rotted. We also have Spanish witness to their skills. The Spanish missed the aliens too.

The egyptians move objects in excess of 500 tons routinely. The largest in their culture is an unfinished obelisk left in situ, which weighs from 1100 to 1400 tons. They obviously thought they could move it, or they wouldn't have started it.

Did aliens help all of these cultures?

BTW, without power or cranes, Catherine the Great had a 1250 ton block moved, the largest rock ever moved. And she didn't have aliens either.

A good start might be Protzen's book on the Inca quarry at Ollantytambo. That is enjoyable, accessible, and clear.


How do your anthropologists suggest the ancient people transported those stones?

Labor.

What primitive technology could have been used? and Why was it so important?

Technology was different, not "primitive." The real trick isn't moving rocks, Jal, it is organizing the labor and logistics. A famous general once said "Amatuers study tactics, professionals study logistics." The real skill of these cultures lay in getting pay out on time, bread baked, organizing the work crews, apportioning the tasks, and training the skilled workers. Moving rocks is child's play, even Taiwan aborigines did it.

how could they have hoisted those stones on top of each other?

There is an extensive literature on this.

There are grooves in the stones in the pyramids that have been said not to have been made with any ordinary sharp chisel - but by sound technology - where could the ancients have got such technology?

The grooves were not made by sonic tech, but by hard work of human labor.

Then the 51 degree angle of the pyramids - a fairly heigh level of physics/mathematics is required in order to have come up with such an angle...

It is clear you did not read Frank D's site above. The Egyptians could easily make the Pyramids work with their math. Taiwan aborigines moved and shaped stone with no math at all.

We dont even know what the pyramids were made for.

Is this a serious statement?

The simplistic theories that egyptologists and anthropologists give leave a lot of questions unanswered. Thats why we need people like sitchin. To open our eyes to other possibilities.

Let's keep an open mind, but not so open that the wind blows through. The Nova website has an excellent series on ancient rock-moving technology. Also, Technology and Culture has articles from time to time, you might want to check the index at their website.

If Sitchin is wack, what about David Icke of www.davidicke.com?

Also a wacko.


What do you cynics think about the idea that the world is controlled by the illuminati?

It's a great book by RAW and RS. But it is fiction.

I'd sure like to hear your opinion on David Ickes ideas.

You just did.

Remember Galileo Galilei was once considered a lunatic.

Nobody ever considered Galileo a lunatic. They just didn't like his ideas. And of course, using the baloney detection scale, you just got 50 points for comparing your ideas to Galileo.

Michael

Here is the forward from the site I am building on the Inkas:

FORWARD

When the Spanish first arrived in South America, they were astounded at the power and beauty of the fortresses, temples and other stone constructions they found. Unable to bring themselves to believe that the local indios had created works of such magnificent craftsmanship and enduring strength, they attributed them to the intervention of devils and demons. Five centuries later, we are still struggling with this racist nonsense, but colonialists pointing to demons have given way to cranks arguing about aliens or a lost science. The tune is still the same, only the words have changed.

Unlike Egypt, where the pyramids, temples and other works were constructed so long ago that much has been lost, Inka buildings and other constructions date from well into this millenium. Consequently, there is a rich supply of historical, anthropological, and archaeological evidence, including quarries, roads, buildings and fortresses, artifacts such as tools, rollers and ramps, written historical chronicles and oral traditions. Anyone even remotely familiar with this literature cannot but conclude that the Inkas indeed constructed the monumental city of Cuzco and its associated stoneworks, as well as the hundreds of other sites attributed to them by serious researchers. As a result, contrary to Egypt or Mesopotamia, where cranks can target gaps in the archaeological record, with the Inkas cranks must fall back on positions which are much harder to defend, such as claiming, for example, that the Inkas and Spanish lied about everything, that Cuzco and Sacshuaman are somehow different from other Inka sites, or that there is a conspiracy among all past and present archaeologists.

A famous general once said: "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics." Underlying the crank focus on (really big) blocks is a skin-deep understanding of technology as (really big) artifacts. A crank looking at a pyramid is a like a little boy peering at the outside of his erector set box, tongue sticking out in concentration, wondering how to build that really cool car pictured there. The artifact, however, is merely one aspect of the technology. It cannot, as cranks are wont to do, be ripped from its social, cultural, economic and political context any more than an organ can be torn from the body and expected to function. The real technological trick to building a Pyramid of Khufu or a Kailasa Temple lies not in solving the engineering problems, but in the organization, training, management and care of large numbers of workers, overseers and planners. To a serious scholar, a pyramid or a temple is a not merely a set of engineering problems, but an artifact endlessly suggestive of research areas for a society as a whole.

Cranks may also be known by what they ignore. Even more revealing than the crank focus on (really big) artifacts is the corresponding lack of crank attention to the truly amazing achievements of antiquity, such as plant and animal breeding, Hellenistic or Indian philosophy, the canal system and the meritocratic bureaucracy of ancient China, or the development of the zero (consider how many pre-industrial societies moved large rocks, but how few had a concept of the zero). One never hears cranks arguing that aliens tutored the Greeks in democracy, introduced paper to China or taught bronzemaking to the ancient peoples of Thailand.

Furthermore, to a crank, technology is something big and obvious. The vast majority of technologies, from cooking to metalworking to sewing to potterymaking, don't even show up on the crank radar screen; cranks are simply oblivious to them. The implication of the crank world-view is that the ancient world was too intellectually and technically primitive to handle the engineering and mathematics of moving and siting (really big) rocks, but was quite capable of dealing with the subtleties of ontological philosophy or the trickiness of investment casting. Placed in the broad context of the technological and intellectual resourcefulness of ancient societies, however, the moving of (really big) rocks is not at all remarkable. In fact, as anyone familiar with the history of technology knows, the use of extremely large rocks shows that the Inkas and Egyptians used labor-intensive, low-tech methods, not advanced technology, in the construction of their wonderful fortresses, temples and cities.

Finally, cranks target only a handful of ancient sites, largely those in the Andes and ancient Egypt as well as a few neolithic sites in Europe. There is a deafening silence among the cranks about places like the monumental Kailasa Temple at Ellora, or the ruins of Hampi, or the temples at Khajuraho, or Mahabalipuram, or a hundred other sites in India, Indonesia, Thailand and China, many of which predate the Inkas by hundreds of years. The lack of a comparative view among the cranks shows glaringly in such areas as crank claims about Mayan mathematical expertise, which was indeed great, yet nowhere near that of the contemporaneous Chinese. As far as crankdom is concerned, Asia does not even exist. No doubt we should be thankful for small favors.

This site has a twofold purpose. First, it is meant as a reference for people who need arguments with which to confront cranks (numerological claims are ignored as they are self-refuting). Thus, the presentation of information is generally followed by a discussion of crank arguments, as well as comparative commentary to put Inka acheivements in perspective. Second, it is also planned as a general information resource on Inka lithic technology, techniques and capabilities. The site is tightly-focused and unless it bears directly on the subject at hand, there is only a limited amount of general background material on the Inkas and their fascinating history, culture and society. For that, the reader has both my apologies and a bibliography and list of links, supplied to fill those needs.

Michael Turton
September, 1998

Copyright notice: The contents of this site are copyright 1998 by Michael A. Turton unless otherwise noted. Feel free to copy or use whatever you find here, but I ask that you credit me whenever you do so.

If the moderator will tolerate one more post on the stupidity of the aliens-built-the-pyramids idea, here is a parody piece on the Taj Mahal for my Inka site:

A close examination of the Taj Mahal, allegedly built in the 17th century by Shah Jahan as a tomb for his third wife, reveals that it contains mathematical clues which prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is an artifact of an ancient civilization with technology far more advanced than our own.

The Taj is built of white marble on a base of red sandstone and covered with inscriptions from the Koran inlaid in precious and semi-precious stone. The building itself is 186 feet (56.7 metres) on each side. At each corner of the platform stands a minaret (prayer tower) 133 feet (40.5 metres) high. A dome 70 feet (21.3 metres) in diametre and 120 feet (36.6 metres) high rests atop the main building. The central room contains two sarcophagi, which are fakes; the real bodies of Shah Jahan and his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, rest below.

Traditionally 20,000 workers are said to have worked on the Taj, with architects from far away as England and Italy involved in the design. Clearly, this is nonsense. Where were they housed? There are no extant remains of dormatories or kitchens for them. Furthermore, where is the debris from all this construction? The traditions are obviously lies. Archaeologists and scholars
are involved in a conspiracy to suppress the truth mankind cannot handle: the Taj is the product of an advanced civilization, perhaps the same one that built the Pyramids of Egypt.

The Taj contains mathematical clues which reveal its true origins. For example, 1000 times the length of one base side in feet gives us 186,000, which is the speed of light in a vacuum in miles per second, a figure not known to the Moguls who allegedly built the Taj. Divide the height of each minaret by 4 (the number of minarets) and you get 4.3, the number of light-years to the nearest star outside the solar system. Note that dividing twice the length of the base by the height yields 3.1, a number suspiciously close to the magic pi figure of 3.14 -- same as in the similar calculation for the Great Pyramid at Giza. Obviously this is a clue which links the Taj and the Great Pyramid.

Other clues to the origin of the Taj lie in its advanced construction techniques. No one living can reproduce the inlay work on the Taj, 64 squares to the square inch. How were the marble blocks cut so precisely? Scholars ridiculously claim that this was done by hand. Nonsense. Only machines can produce such precision. Obviously when the Moguls found it there they simply recarved the original inlay work into the verses from the Koran currently found there. Who knows what precious information was lost when they destroyed the ancient inscriptions?
Additionally, despite the constant warfare in the area, the Taj has never been pillaged and
destroyed. What is protecting it?

Michael

jaliet, I saw this book on Egyptian construction the other day at Barnes & Noble. It shows line drawings of actual Egyptian carvings that depict scenes of construction (how they moved those big stone blocks, etc.). It looked excellent and extrememely technical.

Also, I mentioned Herodotus. Here is what he has to say on the issue in Histories 2:124-125:

"...To some was assigned the dragging of great stones from the stone quarries in the Arabian mountains as far as the Nile; to others he [Cheops] gave orders, when these stones had been taken across the river in boats, to drag them, again as far as the Libyan hills. The people worked in gangs of one hundred thousand for each period of three months. The people were afflicted for ten years of time in building the road along which they dragged the stones - in my opinion a work as great as the pyramid itself. For the length of the road is more than half a mile, and its breadth is sixty feet, and its height, at its highest, is forty-eight feet. It is made of polished stone, and there are figures cared on it. Ten years went to this road and to the underground chambers on the hill on which the pyramids stand. These chambers King Cheops made as burial chambers for himself in a kind of island, bringing in a channel from the Nile. The pyramid itself took twenty years in the building. It is a square, each side of it eight hundred feet long, and the same in height, made of polished and most excellently fitted stones. No stone is less than thirty feet long."

"This is how the pyramid was mad: like a set of stairs, which some call battlements and some altar steps. When they had first made this base, they then lifted the remaining stone [triangular stones which filled in the steps] with levers made of short timbers, lifting them from the ground to the first tier of steps, and, as soon as the stone was raised upon this, it was placed on another lever, which stood on the first tier, and from there it was dragged up to the second tier and on to another lever. As many as were the tiers, so many were the levers; or it may have been that they transferred the same lever, if it were easily handleable, to each tier in turn, once they had got the stone out of it. I have offered these two different stories of how they did it, for both ways were told me. The topmost parts of the pyramid were finished first, and after that they completed the next lowest, and then, finally, the last and lowest, which was at ground level. There is Egyptian writing on the pyramid telling the amounts spent on radishes, onions, and garlic for the workmen. As far as my memory serves me, the interpreter, reading the writing, said that sixteen hundred talents of silver had been spent. If this is so, how much more must have been spent on the iron with which they worked and on the workmen's food and clothing-considering the time that I have mentioned, during which they build the works, and the rest, as I see it, during which they cut the stone and brought it and worked at the underground chambers-altogether a huge period."

Strangely, no mention of aliens or gods building the pyramids...

Ish

The fact is that the ancient chaps could not have achieved such technological feats at the time they lived - with what they had at their disposal - at the time.

The evidence is all there. But our way of thinking turns a blind eye to it. Our eminet scholars say No. Thats why "wackos" like Sitchin and Von Daniken are making money publishing their wack ideas. Because people are seeking answers and all we are doing with science is sitting at the sidelines and demeaning the ideas of these people. Who we say are "wack".

Calling their ideas wack is the easiest thing to do.

The fact is that the ancient chaps could not have achieved such technological feats at the time they lived - with what they had at their disposal - at the time.

The evidence is all there.

Bring it on then. Start a new thread in Science and skepticism. Or, if you like, we can have a formal debate in the formal debate forum on the origin of the Pyramids.

The fact is that moving large rocks was done throughout antiquity by many cultures, using simple technology. Which aliens helped the Romans build Baalbek?

Michael

QUOTE]Originally posted by marduck:
Please, let's not lump Sitchin in with Von Daniken.
Why not? They have the same ideas.


No they don’t, Sitchin (when he’s not drifting off topic) is merely quoting the Sumerians

I've seen Sitchin and to only the most PC is he a 'racist'.
Sitichin's ideas are racist. Their pedigree descends from the early Europeans who, with their racist imagination, thought that there was no way the ancients could have done the things they did.
They also stem from a small-child view of technology as (really big) artifacts. Actually the great achievements of antiquity did not involve the moving of great rocks, which many cultures did, but the canal system of China, the zero, Greek democracy, sewing and fire, writing, and hundreds of other things that were genuine progress, and which only a total wacko would link to aliens.

Again Sithchin is not saying this, he’s quoting the ancient texts.


induced or otherwise. What do you think?
Either they represent people, or they are invention. But they aren't aliens.

And you know this how? The game seems to be that the ancients are smart enough to do all you claim but way too stupid to write an accurate account of how they got this knowledge. Writing was difficult in those days, only a few scribes could do it, and yet all they wrote was ancient science fiction? When then did they begin to write accurate accounts? Oh, I know, when it says something we like! All ancient cultures from China to India to Babylon to Central & South America have stories about beings who came from heaven (and let’s not kid ourselves, when they wrote heaven they meant outer space, where the stars are, heaven was not a place you went when you died until the Christian era) and taught humans. The Jews have the Watchers in the book of Enoch who taught technology like metallurgy and astronomy, the Hindus have thousands of pages in the Vedas about the Negas (snake people) and their flying machines, the Mayzns & Aztecs have there flying snake gods as well.
Let’s face it, something back then got these people all riled up
Mythology always has a basis in fact and all Mythology and Religion begin and end with the Annunaki.
Without them we’d probably still be swinging from trees.

Sitchin, if nothing else has at least brought these ancient stories to the public, whether they like it or not, any guy that can get both fundys & humanists all bent out of shape must be on to something!

Turtonum, I think I really like you. If you can throw a gauntlet at my feet like that, thats definitely my kind of person. I will pick up the gauntlet.
Obviously, you are ahead of me as far as Inca technology is concerned. I am trying to go thro the info in the web before I start our thread.
So, these people could handle monoliths like childs play but couldnt come up with proper ways of communication, couldnt write, no cure for various diseases, worshipped the sun, dressed in skins and never travelled worldwide?
Very interesting. Sounds like seme pretty lopsided advancement if you ask me.
The fact is that moving large rocks was done throughout antiquity by many cultures, using simple technology. Which aliens helped the Romans build Baalbek?

Michael[/B][/QUOTE]

Turtonum, I think I really like you. If you can throw a gauntlet at my feet like that, thats definitely my kind of person. I will pick up the gauntlet. Obviously, you are ahead of me as far as Inca technology is concerned. I am trying to go thro the info in the web before I start our thread.

That would probably be a good idea.

So, these people could handle monoliths like childs play but couldnt come up with proper ways of communication, couldnt write, no cure for various diseases, worshipped the sun, dressed in skins and never travelled worldwide?

That does not describe the Incas. The Incas conquered much of the world they knew, performed brain surgery (trepanning) and knew cures for many diseases, had a complex religion which they deliberately constructed as part of a political ideology to aid their rule, dressed in a variety of fabrics and kept records on quipu. They also used relief maps and knew how to sinter platinum.

The ancients were as sophisticated as we are.

Very interesting. Sounds like seme pretty lopsided advancement if you ask me.

Only if you know nothing about technology. Shaping and moving big rocks is low-tech, anybody can do it, which is why everybody did.

Advanced civilizations build with a variety of materials, some of which are artificial, and use smaller blocks because they are easier to handly. Later Egyptian dynasties built Pyramids of brick, the Chinese built large builds of brick, tile, porcelain and even iron.

Using large stone blocks shows no characteristics of advanced civilization.

If you seriously want to debate this, I suggest you read people like Protzen.

Michael

I completely agree with Michael that the ancients were much more advanced than most of us give them credit for. The Egyptians kept records of many of their building projects. They were excellent engineers.

Anyway, thanks for the interesting info you presented about the other ancient cultures, Michael. I look forward to more if there is to be a debate, though I would advise jaliet to do more research before taking the challenge.

Ish