# Mystery in Bolivia



## ManTimeForgot (Mar 11, 2009)

Puma Punku.  Built out of granite (diorite) with a predominant mohs scale hardness of 7 (possibly higher? can't seem to find a definitive answer online).  Carbon steel has a mohs scale hardness of 6 (higher than the 3 or 4 that copper and bronze tools would have had at the time).

The natives at the time did not have a writing system.  The nearest trees are hundreds of miles away.  And it sits atop a hill (carrying 400 ton stones uphill!).  Equidistant drilling and laser equivalent leveling.


I'd be a liar if I didn't say I was very curious how this all could be accomplished in the year 500...  Even if there was a mundane explanation for this (which I'm all ears for); just what precisely induces people to do something like this?  I mean if someone told me that in order to please the gods I had to haul a stone the size of my house hundreds of miles I'd have told them where they can shove that stone!

MTF


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## Precision Grace (Mar 12, 2009)

Time travel and stone lego.


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## Cudaer (Mar 12, 2009)

Sorry to act like an egghead  Which I'm not!!  

Flint is quite hard. It measures 7 on a hardness scale, compared to 10 for diamonds. The edges of flint flakes are quite sharp. This could be an answer


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 12, 2009)

I've heard arguments to the effect that flint and obsidian could have been used, but the problem is that flint flakes off (making for a smooth cut to be virtually impossible) and obsidian would almost certainly shatter (leaving evidence in the rock itself).

Of course this doesn't explain how form-fitting hardness seven rocks were precision cut at 400+ tons with no trees anywhere nearby and stacked on top of each other...  Or why someone would even do that?!

MTF


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## ktabic (Mar 12, 2009)

The reference to Mohs scale of hardness is a bit of a red-herring. It only addresses the scratch resistance of a material. It does not mean that a harder (on Mohs) material cannot be broken by a softer (on Mohs) material. 

Diamond is the hardest easily advailble material, with a Mohs value of 10 (there are a few materials above that, the hardest currently is aggregated diamond nanorods with a Mohs of 12). But men have been shaping diamond for cenuries, with equipment that is 7 or less on Mohs. They wheren't interested in scratching the diamond.

On the same principal - it might be highly resistant to scratches, but it can also be worn away by abrasion. 

As for the weight part, Puma Punka may sit atop a hill, but when it was built it was by a lake shore. This may or may not have helped them (the quarry was apprently 10km way over the lake). Also, the place may be treeless now, but 1500 years ago it could have been a forest - treelessness was normally the result of humans. It's still incrediably impressive, but the lack of (mundane) answers normally means people haven't managed to make a proper study of the area.


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 12, 2009)

Not saying you can't shape materials of greater hardness with lesser hardness.  What I am saying is that making straight edge seams/cuts which rival modern laser cuts with something softer than what you are working on defies most conventional explanations.  And if abrasion was the method used, then we are talking about large scale planning and hundreds of years...  Would a culture completely lacking the written word (something which all the experts agree on) be able to pull that off?  Can this be done 
without mathematics (need a writing system to pull off math)?

And as far as I am aware the Oriente in Bolivia has always been a grassland...


I'm not going to espouse an extraordinary theory unless I need one.  In point of fact I'm posting this as a question mostly because I would like to hear alternative explanations than the ones that Alien Astronaut theorists espouse.

MTF


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## Happy Joe (Mar 12, 2009)

All it needs is a ruler with a vision and resources. Cutting stone is not difficult (people have been doing it for thousands of years). The only thing that is at all amazing is that some people seem to equate the lack of machine tools with an inability to do things with precision. " 'Tis a poor workman that blames his tools."

Abrasives (sand) can be used to smooth and cut. A line of holes can be drilled pretty efficiently with a bow drill and will effectively guide a string and abrasive slurry. (Tooth polish and dental floss is not allowed in some jails because they can cut, relatively easily, the hardened steel bars used to confine detainees).

With no examples of the materials I would postulate a process something like this;
Drill deep holes in line into the rock then use wedges and feathers (a kind of rock splitting tool) to split off a slab (very traditional historical method of cutting rock)
Hammer to rough shape using the pecking method of the Native Americans (beat the high spots with rocks until they turn to dust).
Apply templates as necessary to maintain product form and consistancy,
Use a combination of drilling beating and abrasion to finish.
Polish to a high luster.

A string will do for a straight edge (at least until one is fabricated from stone) and faces can be lapped very flat to one another relatively easily using abrasives and water.

The only tools necessary are rocks, cordage, a stave for each bow drill, water and sand.
(The ancient Egyptians produced amazing works with similar tools).

Yes, it will be labor intensive but who would skimp on labor for our holy ruler/god/high mucky muck?

Enjoy!


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 13, 2009)

Dude... 400 ton diorite slabs that are all form fitting, as in they are all interlocking with a tolerance measured to less than millimeter in most areas.  I admit I don't know enough about masonry to be able to say that's impossible, but I know for a fact that 400 cars can't be lifted by any crane or forklift I'm aware of, so what can?


And sand and water can shape hard stone _eventually..._  But a project of this magnitude (search for Puma Punku and see the scale of this) would take hundreds of years to accomplish with human power, assuming it was even possible for humans to do unaided.

I'm not sure what beasts of burden they had (if any I haven't done the research there), but what they also lack are trees.  So a small number of wood and an abundance of stone and copper tools, but large scale projects I had thought would require wood...  Am I wrong?

MTF


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## Drachir (Mar 13, 2009)

I was interested enough in this posting to Google it and found that there is a bit of variation in the information about the site.  Some claim that the largest stone is over 400 tons, but others place the stone at only 130 tons.  130 tons, of course, is still a considerable weight for primitive people to move, but similar stones in places like Japan were moved with technology that was not much more advanced.  The huge 130 ton Octopus Stone at Osaka Castle is an example of a very large stone that was moved a considerable distance before being placed in the castle walls.  There are also a number of giant stones in Egypt which were apparently moved about by the ancient Egyptians which equal or surpass in size those at Pumapunku.  

Does anyone have any definitive information on the actual size of stones at Pumapunku?


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## ktabic (Mar 13, 2009)

ManTimeForgot said:


> And sand and water can shape hard stone _eventually..._  But a project of this magnitude (search for Puma Punku and see the scale of this) would take hundreds of years to accomplish with human power, assuming it was even possible for humans to do unaided.



To give you an idea of what ancient civilisations where capable of:
The Great Pyramid in Eygpt, build around 2560BC, and was the tallest structure in the world for 3800 years. 
It consists of 2.3 million blocks of stone - all quarried and shipped.
It only took around 20 years to build - so they had to move 800 tonnes every day.

Stonehenge, built of a period of 1600 years, had to move blocks of stone some 320km. 40 tonne blocks.

I must admit that Puma Punka interested me enough to do some research, and now I'm becoming suspicious.
Very little archaeological research by properly equipped teams has been done. This isn't surprising - there are many interesting sites and not enough archaeologists and funds.
But what has been done makes no mention of a 440 tonne block of stone (they do mention 100 tonne ones).

Of those websites that do mention 440 tonne block of stone, many seem to state the same thing - as in, it's a copy'n'paste that whole paragraph then slightly rearrange the words. And that makes me distinctly suspicious of their claims.


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## Dave (Mar 13, 2009)

I agree that Granite does not shear or fracture easily, but I believe that it could be cut and sanded as described by Happy Joe, and to such a precision - it would only require work stretching over more than several lifetimes, a slave workforce, and the kind of dedication we find unbelievable.

As for moving such heavy rocks - have you ever heard of Robert E. Peary and the Cape Hall meteorite? It took him and his Inuit helpers three years to get one of the pieces aboard a ship in Greenland; they did build a railway, and they did have some timber, but even so, that was just the easy part. Getting it off the ship in New York was the hard part. It was so heavy (30.9 tonnes) that none of the harbour cranes could handle it, and a shipyard crane actually buckled in the attempt.

Still, that is still only a 1/10th of the size of some of these, if we believe it. Is there any chance that the stones were already at the top of the hill and simply cut and rearranged in situ?


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## Happy Joe (Mar 13, 2009)

As a part of my hobby of looking at the technical achievements of the past; available information on Puma Punku was examined several years ago.  At that time, while the large stone pieces were interesting, what was most intriguing was the apparent modular construction (although little seems to remain of the walls/modular pieces, and what is there seems to have fallen over).

Closeups of the rows of holes connected by the cut lines showed little better precision in alignment that most (not particularly careful) people would do with a modern drill. A single mm +/- tolerance is slightly better than commercial tolerance in most hand tool based rough carpentry (not even close to precision work).

The manipulation of large stones seems to have been done so often in early times that it must have been almost commonplace. For a 400 ton block though; a reasonable explanation would be to shape it in situ.

For those who are interested a person (in the state of Wisconsin, I believe) has found a way to move large stones without power tools and this seems to be a strong contender as a possible rediscovery of primitive methods;

Pyramids, Stonehenge, Easter Island and the Great Pyramid explained by Wallace Wallington!

Enjoy!


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## Ursa major (Mar 13, 2009)

The Wiki entry on diorite (Diorite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) includes this text:


> Diorite is an extremely hard rock, making it difficult to carve and work with. It is so hard that ancient civilizations (such as Ancient Egypt) used diorite balls to work granite. *Its hardness, however, also allows it to be worked finely and take a high polish*, and to provide a durable finished work.


 
Now while I do realise that the original post was talking about accuracy in terms of large interlocking blocks, there was an implication that because a rock is hard, it's difficult to get other than a rough surface out of it. The above quote suggests quite the opposite.


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## Nik (Mar 14, 2009)

I was very impressed by the stone-shifting linky: It reminded me of how us kiddies 'walked' planters and bins around the garden...

IIRC, repair work on Inca stonework found that only the visible edges were worked to their famous close tolerance.

Also, I doubt that diorite balls began round. They became that way as use wore edges down...

As for close tolerance, remember mirrors and lenses used to be hand-ground, 'figured' to optical precision with rouge and a bitumen pad. The two major advances in 'figuring' were polishing machinery then, recently, spin-casting of mirror-blanks...


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 14, 2009)

If you look at a link to an article on Tihuanaco (sp?) on the site happy joe layed down you get this...


"One of              the construction blocks from which the pier was fashioned weighs an              estimated 440 tons (equal to nearly 600 full-size cars) and several              other blocks laying about are between 100 and 150 tons. The quarry              for these giant blocks was on the western shore of Titicaca, some              ten miles away. There is no known technology in all the ancient              world that could have transported stones of such massive weight and              size. The Andean people of 500 AD, with their simple reed boats,              could certainly not have moved them. Even today, with all the modern              advances in engineering and mathematics, we could not fashion such a              structure."



Now I'm preeetty sure that the last statement is just exaggeration, but being able to do it with an illiterate peoples in reed boats (not modern supertankers with cranes) is mind-boggling.

I mean maybe it could be done if you gave them 1,000 years to do it in, but holy crap how do you convince a populace to spend 1,000 years to do something?!  (Ursa I am aware that harder substances take on shapes more readily; its the reason why cotton balls don't have better edges than diamonds.  But the point is that hard substances don't take on those edges easily; sanding/water abrasion takes time... serious time if the size of some of these things are to be believed)

MTF


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## Ursa major (Mar 14, 2009)

Two things about ancient peoples (okay 1500 years is not _that_ long ago, but anyway...):

They were as intelligent as us, in that they were able to solve problems. (If all _we_ did was to read books to find solutions, we wouldn't be finding out how to do new stuff, would we?) So unless the largest block was already at the site (i.e. moved there by some geological process), it was moved by humans and one of them worked out how to do it. (We're humans: that's what we do.)

They were as stupid as us, so they were prepared to spend a lot of time and effort doing seemingly daft things, such as moving and smoothing enormous blocks of stone; or sending twelve people on a 400000 km jaunt to somewhere where there's no water to drink and no air to breathe**.
 
** - Yes, and _I_ think that _this_ was important; but we are allowed to try to achieve our collective dreams - we're humans: that's what we do - even if the funding may have only been the by-product of rivalry and pride.


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## Happy Joe (Mar 14, 2009)

> maybe it could be done if you gave them 1,000 years to do it in,


 
Since it exists (baring exaggeration or misinformation) it must have been done and almost certainly did not take 1000 years.

Just because you do not know how to make a chronometer does not make them a gift from a higher power or aliens.

I do agree that many of the large artefact's from ancient times are mind boggling to some extent.
One of the best parts is that the farther you go back into history the larger the largest artifacts/blocks become (to an extent).

A lot of people who make statements like "Even today, with all the modern advances in engineering and mathematics, we could not fashion such a structure." simply do not understand that we can replicate anything that I have seen reference to from the ancient world, today, if sufficient money and time were to be made available for the task. No, it may not be easy but it would not be impossible.

There is a huge difference in not knowing exactly how the ancients did or made things and not being able to replicate objects that have obviously been fabricated or tasks that have been done.
As a retired engineer I simply do not believe people who use dirty language like "impossible" or "can't" I do believe people who say things like "too expensive" or "don't want to" but only after checking their figures and looking for alternatives.

Here is a link to moving a 4,400 ton structure; the Cape Hatteras light house;
Cape Hatteras National Seashore - Moving the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse (U.S. National Park Service)

Enjoy!


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 15, 2009)

Joe:

I don't believe aliens did it.  Aliens (Yes, they exist. No, I won't debate this with you.  Air exists.  Aliens exist.  Deal with it) capable of interstellar travel don't go around telling ants how to build a better anthill; its just not part of their program otherwise we would be awash in skyscraper ruins that the ancient Greeks built.


But what I do believe is that I have no fracking clue how humans could have built Puma Punku and if you can please shed some light on it without implying I'm some kind of weirdo it would be much appreciated.


From the link you listed:  "To accomplish this feat, the original foundation down to the pine timbers was replaced by temporary shoring beams and supports. Then a steel beam mat was inserted over the timber mat with temporary posts on top. As cross beams and main beams were set, the temporary shoring parts and beams were removed. Hydraulic jacks built into the main beams were used to effect the 6 foot raise so that roll beams and rollers could be introduced. After all jacks were shored, using oak cribbing, the system was pressurized and the jacks began lifting. At each lift level, jacks were retracted and shored up in sequence and the system lifted again to 6 feet. At this point it was ready to roll."

I can see how this works.  While my knowledge of engineering is insufficient to do the math I know enough of physics and metallurgy to know that the tensile strengths, flexibility, and densities are more or less compatible.

My problem lies here:  All this required planning.  Planning as I understand it requires math and writing.  The people who built Puma Punku did not have a written language (this is something that every expert on the native indians of the area agrees upon).  The area it was built upon sits atop a plain which would require hundreds of km treks in order to acquire wood to build support struts, rollers, lifts, levers, etc.  How would this be done without wood?

A lesser problem I have is one of ability: How do you perform precision drilling on something which is hardest substance you have?  I get abrasion for cuts (it takes hundreds of years for something of this size, but it is possible), but how would you drill?  Equal hardness drill bits?  I can see volcanic glass and abrasion shaped diorite drill heads doing the trick (again over a stupid amount of time), but is this really all there is?

MTF


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## Dave (Mar 15, 2009)

MTF - Joe isn't saying he knows how, only that it happened, so therefore it must be possible. So, on that point I think we are all agreed. I don't think aliens helped them either.

And I agree entirely with Ursa Major about the going to the Moon analogy. This was an achievement that showed to everyone around that these were people who could do such amazing technological things you had better leave them well alone. So, I think prestige is the only reason needed for the "why?" part.

I don't see your point about the written language as the major problem you do. These people had a civilisation, so communication goes without saying. They must have been able to express, communicate and record ideas in some way - pictograms, chants, songs, hand-symbols?? For arithmetic, they could have counted with an abacus of coloured stones without any need to use symbols.

Your other point about the lack of Timber is something I do see as a problem. Unless the block was already at the top of the hill - due to weathering of surrounding softer sandstone - this does sound like a volcanic granite plug - then I assume that some kinds of Pulleys or Levers would be needed. What kinds of local materials could be substituted for Timber? And you would need rope - strong rope which I'm not sure they would be capable of.

On the other hand, who says there was no timber? Are we not assuming that the climate there then, was the same as it is now? That is a very big assumption and likely to be wrong.

The third point about precision drilling was already answered earlier by Joe. Only the faces of the stone blocks are smoothed, and the tolerance of the blocks is not as close as it appears to be at first glance, just good enough.


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## Nik (Mar 15, 2009)

Perhaps the necessary timbers were brought many, many miles ?? Perhaps they came with the big stones ??

Although Easter Island is only a small example, the islanders shifted their blocks with the crater slopes' small trees plus ropes plaited from the crater marsh's reeds...

Um, to clarify an earlier comment about hardnesses of granite and copper drills: IIRC, copper may be work hardened. But, a better way is to use soft copper tools with wet grit-- The hardest constituents of the grit becomes embedded in the copper, allowing a precise cut...


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## TheEndIsNigh (Mar 15, 2009)

Assuming that google isn't having a fit and I haven't been looking at the wrong site I don't understand the problem

Now it seems to me that if you have established a dock existed capable of handling hundreds of boats then how the stones got there is not a problem. How they were worked is surely down to where they where worked. Hoe they got the ships to the docks is just a question of irrigation something I believe they were quite good at since the apear to hav existed in an area that isn't famous for it's water/lakes or seas


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 15, 2009)

Nik: Thank you that alleviates my not knowing how drilling could reasonably be accomplished.  Spending 100 years on some huge project is something I can wrap my mind around.


TEIN: Reed boats used to carry 100-150 ton stone blocks?  I confess I don't know all that much about the science behind buoyancy, but I don't think you can diffuse the weight of such a giant across enough reed boats to buoy them up.  Am I wrong?


Dave:  The climate does not show any signs of major cliimactic shift in the geologic record (plant life appears to have been the same).  1500 years is not a long time as far as the planet is concerned.  Tihuanaco is 17,000 years old so I would grant that the climate was different then even without bothering to look.

As far as writing goes: they did not have a system for storing information that was not oral.  This is a huge barrier to mathematics and one that I don't understand as being surmountable for architecture.  I mean can you really sing a whole complicated plan to your huge work force (and I'm pretty sure we all agree that a very large work force is needed for a project of this magnitude)?  I think, again, we can all agree that a high degree of coordination would be required to pull off something as immense as this?


As far as rope goes: I don't see that as much of a problem as you do apparently.  Braided reed and other natural plant fibers can be pretty strong, and with stones that large having multiple ropes wouldn't be too much of a stretch (presumably these people spent a considerable amount of time working on this).  But the size of the 440 ton dock stone still troubles me.  IF it came from the same quarry as the other stones, then it was several miles away.  How do you get something that large and unbroken moved that far?


Tihuanaco is just a whole different kind of mystery (but in a good way).  Tihuanaco pushes the very first civilizations out of fertile crescent/egypt into south america.  Also the time of 17,000 years ago gotta give it up to earlier men and women for know-how if they have an astrologically relevant city with pyramids a _long_ time before the egyptians were setting such things up.



And honestly people, prestige only goes so far.  Over the course of 500 years a culture changes, very completely.  The United States/Great Britain of 200 years ago are very different than what they are today.  Go 500 years ago Great Britain and very little remains in common with what it is today.  You have to invoke religion in order for this to even come close to making sense.  That's a cultural edifice that resists change and can survive 500 years more or less intact.  What people thought was prestigious 500 years ago very rarely remains that.  But what people thought religiously 500 years often can remain intact.  That said there is still a limit to how far we can take this.  Without a more firm idea of the time-scale I can't grasp what would motivate these people sufficiently to do something like this.

MTF


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## HareBrain (Mar 15, 2009)

ManTimeForgot said:


> Tihuanaco is 17,000 years old


 
Only according to a widely discredited theory by Arthur Posnansky.

See here for rebuttal.

The age of Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) Site, Bolivia


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## TheEndIsNigh (Mar 15, 2009)

MTF:

Given the stones were coming from far afield then there no reason to suppose that the boats were made of reed. They had water and boats they could travel to where other materials they required existed. As for displacing a 200 tons its not that difficult
and multiple hulls could have been used as I believe the Egyptians did.

As for the workforce it's seems generally accepted that the first pyramid was build in a relatively short time (compared to the life line of a city) by only a twenty thousand men (during the holidays at that).

The writing problem is another matter. I assume that you base your argument on the fact none has been found. Yet you argue it would be impossible to build it without written instructions and drawings. However you argue against yourself here. If writing was needed and yet can't be found then either your premise is wrong or the people that did build the place using written record didn't leave any written evidence of those records... Oh wait a minute though, how could that be?


If we are looking for Atlantis (as most of these sites seem to be) then it has always amazed me that given this was all down to Plato and that's seems to be prime source of the legend his description says beyond the pillars of Hercules about 10,000 years ago.

Now I seem to recall that the best candidate (since there is no mention of SAntorini type explosions which surely would have got a mention) that the most obvious place to look would be the English channel. This was a land bridge and about this time was flooding. Since it's inconceivable that such land would be uninhabited. Thats where I'd put my side band mapping sonar if I was looking.


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## Ursa major (Mar 15, 2009)

Speaking of Egypt, some of their obeliskswere very large and the Unfinished Obelisk was enormous**:



> If finished it would have measured around 42 m (120 feet) and would have weighted nearly 1,200 tons.


 
(From Unfinished obelisk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).


The barges were, I'll admit, made of wood; but as Nik and TEIN suggest, if those South Americans were prepared to move very large blocks of stone, there's no reason why they wouldn't have imported other materials (wood) and those with the skills to turn it into boats.



** - Having stood on it, I can attest to its large size.


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## Nik (Mar 15, 2009)

IIRC, one of the head-scratchers about Stonehenge was how the Welsh lumps could be fitted onto the limited craft they had available. Even rafting would be a problem...

I suggested that the stones were slung *beneath* rafts. That way, the load is reduced by water's density and there's no risk of capsizing. Shore handling could take advantage of the large tidal ranges at the natural crossing. 

Um, I don't think any-one's happened upon either 'dropped' stones, or evidence of saline immersion...

FWIW, if mega-lift cranes are not available, salvors still use pontoons & barges to step shallow wrecks ashore, tide by tide, by winching in slack on the ebb...


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## Nik (Mar 15, 2009)

Doggerland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Between the ice receding and the Dover Straits opening, there was land where the North Sea now flows. IIRC, fossils & artifacts have been trawled...


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## Drachir (Mar 16, 2009)

ManTimeForgot said:


> Joe:
> 
> I don't believe aliens did it.  Aliens (Yes, they exist. No, I won't debate this with you.  Air exists.  Aliens exist.  Deal with it)MTF



I am sorry MTF, but the fact that you cannot understand something does not mean that there is no logical explanation.  One important fact to remember about most ancient people is that they were not in a great hurry.  If it took them decades to move a stone then they would take decades or whatever they needed.  

A 100 ton (or 400 ton) stone is heavy, but as I pointed out in a previous post the Japanese moved similar stones and explained how they did it.  Amazingly the solution was strikingly simple; they attached barrels to the stones until the lifting power of the barrels matched the weight of the stone and then they floated to stone to the site.  The fact that Tiwanako was close to water is certainly significant.  You claim the people in the area only had reed boats.  That is certainly true now, but it may not have been true 1500 years ago.  It would require a much larger population than what lives in the area now to build an enormous complex like Tiwanako and PumaPunku and that almost certainly means that the climate was probably different.  It would also mean that the vegetation was probably different.  It is quite possible that the ancient civilization of the area may have had more than just a few reeds to use for transport.  If they did them moving enormous blocks of stome might not have been as mysterious as it might seem.


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 16, 2009)

Drachir:

The experts on the people who lived in that area say that their technology consisted of reed boats.  They make this assessment based on the fact that the area did not have ready access to wood.  I'm afraid that 1,500 years is not that long ago and scientists can make very good predictions about the weather based on a myriad of things (soil bacteria, plant decay, sediment deposits, tree/plant rings).  The place has been a plain (altiplano or whatever its called) for quite a while.  Yes, it was situated on a lake, and that obviously factors in some how, but not in the straightforward manner you suggest.


Tihuanaco was almost certainly constructed using floats (the best experts have fielded just such a theory) _but it was built 17,000 years ago not 1500._  The water level has receded as we approach modern times, so having a much much larger lake would have been useful (one that undoubtedly extended to the quarry).  Also: the people who built Tihuanaco and Puma Punku are not the same despite being close together.


And lastly, just because I don't understand something doesn't mean I am assuming no rational explanation exists.  That is intellectual hubris of the worst sort.  No, I am far more open to explanations than you apparently give me credit for.  What I am fuzzy on is why you all keep accusing me of some sort of intellectual bias when all I am doing is attempting to get to the bottom of all this while playing devil's advocate???  I want the best possible theory for fitting all available facts.  If that is wrong, then please tell me so.  Otherwise, I am going to continue to look at every link posted and try and look for ways in which something doesn't make sense until either everything makes sense or I am forced to remit and look at alternative explanations (of which aliens will very likely be one of the last; I think ancestor spirits will come before aliens...).

MTF


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## Ursa major (Mar 16, 2009)

Sorry, MTF, but Tihuanaco does not date from 17000 years ago. It is now thought to date from about 200AD (or 200CE if you prefer).

Here are a couple of Wiki entires that mention it:
Tiwanaku - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia​and
Arthur Posnansky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.​


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## Happy Joe (Mar 16, 2009)

> all I am doing is attempting to get to the bottom of all this while playing devil's advocate


 
Playing devils advocate, which can be a useful tool in some circumstances, is not usually a good way to achieve harmony as it is normally perceived a confrontational.



> I am going to continue to look at every link posted and try and look for ways in which something doesn't make sense until either everything makes sense or I am forced to remit and look at alternative explanations


 
It is always good to push back the frontiers of ignorance.
However, a good understanding of physical possesses and existing knowledges is necessary for a proper evaluation, especially, of supposition advanced as fact, IMO.  
If one is interested in ancient stone artifacts one might find advantage in learning about current and past methods used to move heavy weights, work stone and similar substances.  Then follow up on loose ends to round out the knowledge. 

I am a fan of basic logic, and have found a few approaches to problem solving to work a large proportion of the time;
The most likely solution is normally the least unlikely solution, and normally the most correct (although rarely the most entertaining) and often not completely correct.  
Assumptions/Suppositions/Beliefs must always be modified when confronted by demonstrable fact. 
Belief proves nothing. 
You can't prove a negative, and the lack of factual evidence proves nothing.
When making assumptions it is best to ground them on reproducible fact at the appropriate technology level.
A large proportion of "information" on the internet is bogus, incomplete or distorted.
When encountering a pot hole of personal ignorance, research is necessary to achieve understanding so that progress may be resumed.

Re; Puma Punko;
Large relatively finely worked stones exist therefore someone worked them.
To do so they, probably had a plan (even if verbally transmitted, apprenticeship is a traditional way of transmitting knowledge and techniques in non literate societies).
We do not know if they had writing or knew mathematics. Which proves nothing and indicates nothing, other than the fact that we do not know.
We do not know exactly how they may have moved large weights.  Although, if the large weights were moved it is obvious that some one, or something (earthquake gravity, large flood, etc.) moved them, most likely the indigenous people.  The same with the finished stone work, we do not know exact methods.

To establish how they may have worked stone we need to get some of the same or similar stone and do some experiments.  (Actually work through trial and error as the indigenous peoples would have had to.  Since we may safely assume that the now lost information was hard won; we may reasonably expect this research to take years).  If we can achieve similar results we can then propose a possible method that they may have used (but we still won't know for certain).

Enjoy!


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## Drachir (Mar 17, 2009)

ManTimeForgot said:


> Drachir:
> 
> The experts on the people who lived in that area say that their technology consisted of reed boats.  They make this assessment based on the fact that the area did not have ready access to wood.  I'm afraid that 1,500 years is not that long ago and scientists can make very good predictions about the weather based on a myriad of things (soil bacteria, plant decay, sediment deposits, tree/plant rings).  The place has been a plain (altiplano or whatever its called) for quite a while.  Yes, it was situated on a lake, and that obviously factors in some how, but not in the straightforward manner you suggest.
> 
> ...



I think I was disturbed by your original reference to aliens. * 
Aliens (Yes, they exist. No, I won't debate this with you.  Air exists.  Aliens exist.  Deal with it)*


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## clovis-man (Mar 18, 2009)

Ursa major said:


> Two things about ancient peoples (okay 1500 years is not _that_ long ago, but anyway...):
> 
> They were as intelligent as us, in that they were able to solve problems. (If all _we_ did was to read books to find solutions, we wouldn't be finding out how to do new stuff, would we?) So unless the largest block was already at the site (i.e. moved there by some geological process), it was moved by humans and one of them worked out how to do it. (We're humans: that's what we do.)
> 
> They were as stupid as us, so they were prepared to spend a lot of time and effort doing seemingly daft things, such as moving and smoothing enormous blocks of stone; or sending twelve people on a 400000 km jaunt to somewhere where there's no water to drink and no air to breathe**.




Makes good sense to me. Most theorists on ancient human behavior seem to get in trouble precisely at the point that they underestimate those people's ability to do something. And the current topic strikes me as just a new chapter in an old controversy. And a South American one at that.

See: Inca Construction

Let's not let Van Daniken "logic" muddy the waters, i.e., we don't know how it happened, so it must be supernatural.


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 20, 2009)

Drachir said:


> I think I was disturbed by your original reference to aliens. *
> Aliens (Yes, they exist. No, I won't debate this with you.  Air exists.  Aliens exist.  Deal with it)*




If you look at that original reference it is immediately paired with the statement to the effect "That no alien is ever going to come down and magically bestow wondrous technology on a race that is the evolutionary equivalent of ants compared to them."


I'm looking for the missing factors that lead to how this could be done.


Happy Joe: I have looked into the peoples from the anthropological side of things (this isn't all internet research I do have access to a library) and the indigenous peoples of that area did not have a writing system.  Now I am not going to go so far as to say that all math is impossible without writing (that is obviously wrong), but pretty much every class I'm ever seen regarding architecture and engineering required written plans to do anything of large or complex in nature.

There is a missing factor here, and I was hoping to maybe tease something out that would help make sense here.  If everyone is just going to shrug their heads, then I guess we can just live and let die.

MTF


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## TheEndIsNigh (Mar 20, 2009)

> MTF
> ...but pretty much every class I'm ever seen regarding architecture and engineering required written plans to do anything of large or complex in nature.


 
Again you can't have this as a contradiction. You're saying that these things need plans and that those plans have been removed.

So why the need for some "mysterious" tidier/cleaner up of plans. If I can build structures like these surely I'm capable of tidying up after myself.

Then ask yourself if aliens having mastered space travel why, why, why would they go to some planet half was across the galaxy to play with some stones and just leave them there with no trace of their passing.

I can't conceive of a super race that would bother to do it let alone having done it resist the temptation of sticking some kind of graffiti on the wall.


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## Hilarious Joke (Mar 20, 2009)

Okay, okay, I did it. I was bored one day.


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 20, 2009)

TheEndIsNigh said:


> Again you can't have this as a contradiction. You're saying that these things need plans and that those plans have been removed.
> 
> So why the need for some "mysterious" tidier/cleaner up of plans. If I can build structures like these surely I'm capable of tidying up after myself.
> 
> ...





*Calms down*  I am not actually suggesting aliens did it.  If you actually bothered to read my posts you would have noticed that I've already said it twice that the chances of aliens bothering to help ant-like races is next to zero for exactly the same reasons you suggest.


If your main point is we just can't find their plans because they got rid of them, then how about suggesting how they did it without a system of writing?  These people, to the best knowledge and awareness of our anthropologists, were without writing.  How do you plan effectively without writing?

If oral planning is all that's left, then I am left with what I perceive to be a lack of reasonable choices.  Building something without the best tools/materials easily available is idiocy (change your freaking location).  Needing decades to plan because of conflicting or unnecessary oral plans is bonkers.  Then spending hundreds of years building on top of that is papering greenly very on toastish lunacy.  It takes a kind of societal make up and individual personality composition so foreign to me that I would reject it almost out of hand were it not for those bloody ruins.

MTF


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## the smiling weirwood (Mar 20, 2009)

I don't understand the question. 

Obviously they accomplished the task, given that the evidence is there on the hilltop. Native Americans were accomplished workers in stone and earth, examples being the Nazca Lines and other earthen works across both continents. 

Are you suggesting they did it with magic/aliens/psychic powers?

The builders of Stone Henge and the Egyptian pyramids moved large blocks of stone, so the ancients did indeed have technologies capable of such feats. The article should say, "We don't know how they did it."


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## Ursa major (Mar 20, 2009)

Yes, it wasn't rocket science, but it was rock-get science....


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## Hilarious Joke (Mar 21, 2009)

I think people are getting confused. MTF isn't arguing a theory, he's testing everyone else's theories by picking holes in them. We do the same thing in law, if someone has a solution to a legal problem, we try to find all the flaws in it, and if it stands up against that, then it's a workable solution.

At least this is how I see it.


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## the smiling weirwood (Mar 21, 2009)

He isn't really disproving the proposed theories. Its more like repeating the same idea about granite being extraordinarily difficult to plane and cut with ancient methods, which it was, but not impossible. Also, what kind of available workforce are you assuming to be present when you make claims like it would take a thousand years to accomplish?


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## ManTimeForgot (Mar 21, 2009)

I'm basing my assessment on the population densities that I know incan and mayan cultures setup in their "city-states" (which I studied in anthropology class in college).  Basically if you had two such city-states (or one major one) working together you would see somewhere between 2-4,000 workers total (that's not 4,000 people; not everyone is capable of helping out with building; there is a limit to the number of craftsman capable of masonry and not everyone can be given over to the mundane labor of moving things into place or your harvests will fail).  The local city/cities would not have been anywhere near the size of Tikal (60,000 to 100,000 people at its peek), since this culture was not anywhere near as prolific or wide-spread.  You might see a population total in the area of around 10-20 thousand.

The drilling I now understand from other posts to be workable in a decent time frame.  The abrasion for stones of a surface as large as some of those are seems a daunting task, but one that could be undertaken on a large time-scale.  The seeming lack of coordinated planning (as evidenced by a lack of written word and thus making application of mathematics difficult) would tend to draw out how long it would take to complete.  The precision is not as difficult to undertake as I thought it would be based on what I understand from Happy Joe, so I can rule that out as a major determining factor.  But the lack of easily available wood and the location of a quarry 10 miles from the building site and reed boats rendering use of boating for the 400 ton dock stone impossible would tend to make the task nearly insurmountable in what I would consider a "reasonable" amount of time.


I admit I don't know enough about the ideological/religious motivation of the indigineous peoples, but I don't know of any way to motivate people ideologically enough to create a situation where people will work on something for multiple centuries.  I have a degree in sociology and the failure of marxist ideology for motivating a continued socialist/communist state is something that is a typical topic in sociology classes.  People can and do put up with a lot of abuse from their government, but there is a limit, and I am trying to get a good estimate of how long this would take so I can get a good idea what it would take to have put this thing together.

MTF


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## the smiling weirwood (Mar 21, 2009)

Did you remember from your classes that the Inca and their precursors made use of knotted assemblages of string, called quipu, to track numerical data and possibly other unknown functions? This could be something that was integral to the construction and would have filled certain functions lacking a written language. 

I don't think its constructive to say simply, "they couldn't have done it with the resources they had" because obviously they did. 

Also, it is estimated the nearby city of Tiwanaku would have had a population up to 30,000 during the time that Puma Punku is thought to have been constructed. If it was indeed a holy site, then it is also extremely probable that people from outside the area were brought in to either help or donate materials. Pilgrimages to places of cosmic pre-eminence was common and important in Incan culture.


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## HareBrain (Mar 21, 2009)

ManTimeForgot said:


> I admit I don't know enough about the ideological/religious motivation of the indigineous peoples, but I don't know of any way to motivate people ideologically enough to create a situation where people will work on something for multiple centuries. I have a degree in sociology and the failure of marxist ideology for motivating a continued socialist/communist state is something that is a typical topic in sociology classes. People can and do put up with a lot of abuse from their government, but there is a limit, and I am trying to get a good estimate of how long this would take so I can get a good idea what it would take to have put this thing together.
> 
> MTF


 
I'd say these giant projects thousands of years ago were built by people who had a very different mindset to ourselves. Not just in terms of a different ideology or religion, but an inability to see themselves as true individuals. They didn't "think for themselves". It's very hard for us, with our fully developed egos, to appreciate what this must have been like. It's also surprising to most people that our current view of ourselves, our practice of examining our individual interior lives, our own motivations etc, hasn't really been around for that long.


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## Nik (Mar 23, 2009)

I hope to order the DVD on mega-stone moving from the earlier linky. 

It should make a neat gift for a close relative who's keen on Egyptology, and an ingenious guy in his own right...


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## Urlik (Mar 24, 2009)

HareBrain said:


> I'd say these giant projects thousands of years ago were built by people who had a very different mindset to ourselves. Not just in terms of a different ideology or religion, but an inability to see themselves as true individuals. They didn't "think for themselves". It's very hard for us, with our fully developed egos, to appreciate what this must have been like. It's also surprising to most people that our current view of ourselves, our practice of examining our individual interior lives, our own motivations etc, hasn't really been around for that long.


 
I think that someone must have a had a huge ego to have even conceived the idea to try and convince the rest of the population to undertake something of that magnitude.


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## clovis-man (Mar 25, 2009)

Urlik said:


> I think that someone must have a had a huge ego to have even conceived the idea to try and convince the rest of the population to undertake something of that magnitude.


 
Or maybe it was just part of life, like paying taxes or taking out the trash. One thing has been proven over and over: either the cultures who  create such edifices have an abundant food supply which will support specialized labor projects or they have a very long view of the achievements they wish to have. Or both.


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## HareBrain (Mar 25, 2009)

Urlik said:


> I think that someone must have a had a huge ego to have even conceived the idea to try and convince the rest of the population to undertake something of that magnitude.


 
Where the culture demanded it, kings in ancient times allowed themselves to be sacrificed to ensure the fertility of the land. Self-aggrandisement through building seems to have begun with the Egyptians, when the rulers began to get a sense of themselves as important individuals rather than disposable parts of a greater whole (and thus started having others sacrificed in their place) - but this change to ego-led consciousness (not necessarily the same as "having a big ego") might have happened later in the Americas.


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## mosaix (Mar 28, 2009)

Hilarious Joke said:


> Okay, okay, I did it. I was bored one day.



Oh no you don't HJ - it was me!


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## Urlik (Apr 24, 2009)

I just watched a documentary on Machu Pichu (built high on a rdge of the Peruvian Andes) and they showed how blocks were shaped purely by hitting them with hammer stones (smooth stones found in river beds) 
the way that the faces of stones were matched to each other was remarkable in its simplicity

and for those who say that we are unable to build anything of this magnitude today, take a look at the dams and sea defences built around the Netherlands in the early 20th century


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