The average ancient roman plebeian's life would not look dramatically different from ours today, minus technology of course. They worked a day job, ate at thermopoliums (basically fast food), lived in crowded apartment complexes with various forms of slum lords, deal with high rent prices, and roman graffiti is littered with complaints about politicians, sports teams, and the rising cost of living.
With the pyramids, we have the Wadi al-Jarf papyri, a detailed logistics logbook documenting the teams moving the stones for the great pyramids, along side payroll records much like any other spreadsheet you'll find on someone's corporate computer today.
We are not so different from our ancient ancestors at all.
Never read up if that pet theory of mine has any merit, though.
> Crabtree bases his argument on the fact that, for more than 99 percent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities, which has led to big-brained humans. Since the development of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effectively stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical intelligence genes.
https://wcuquad.com/101393/news/humans-are-no-longer-as-inte...
Yeah but that was planted by the aliens, who got the idea from God when she was planting all the dinosaur fossils in 4,004 BC.
The show’s core argument is that ancient civilizations were more advanced than we give them credit for. That may be true, but “more advanced” does not mean they had superior technology or help from aliens. It can simply mean they had technical knowledge, methods, or craftsmanship that we have since lost or forgotten.
Elon Musk has made a similar point about the US space program. We landed on the moon more than 50 years ago, but in some ways we now have to relearn how to do it (because we forgot how). That does not mean we had better technology in the 1960s, and it certainly does not mean aliens were involved. It means knowledge, systems, expertise, and institutional capability can fade over time. And that doesn't mean aliens were involved (as the tvshow would make you believe).
This has also been happening since ancient times. Famously, how to make roman concrete was lost after the fall of the empire and Europe did not reinvent high quality concrete until much later in the 18th century. They also lost entire industrial-scale manufacturing pipelines for pottery and had a regression back to crude, hand-shaped pottery.
Turns out we humans have been dealing with the same human problems for hundreds of thousands of years.
If wanted it in concrete, would be faster. Or could do it in steel or steel/concrete with some interior space (Luxor in Las Vegas is size of smaller pyramid).
Look at how fractured the government and political systems of the west have become. Humans forget. We've forgotten how to build pyramids, we've forgotten the second world war and the lessons learned.
What exactly has led you to believe this...?
^ well, maybe some problems like any project, but they would overcome them.
I have a similar feeling looking at the great cathedrals.
These structures took up a huge proportion of the community's money, labour and talent, for decades on end. They're orders of magnitude bigger than any 'normal' building of the time or for centuries later. All with no prospect of any tangible return.
If we set out now to build the largest structure that the limits of our technology allow, designed almost purely as a work of art with little regard to any function, what would that look like? I don't know, no-one's done it for centuries.
The closest thing is the Eiffel Tower. It's a national icon, the wrought-iron equivalent of a pyramid - but it took two years to build, not twenty. What would an Eiffel Tower with 10x the resources look like? And that's more than a century ago.
It's not hard to believe that humans could build these things, but it's occasionally hard to believe that they chose to.
Luxor in Vegas is way more complicated than the egyptian pyramids were.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-that-wo...
Oh let me tell you the fun of spelling that one over the phone. He's also not the most patient man in the world either :-)
(header)
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
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[email protected]
Like I get it, you’re depressed, but this doesn’t automatically make everyone everywhere that doesn’t believe some random facts “racist”.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-white-southerners...
And why is it bad that people feel wonder at places literally called "wonders" and build stories around them? That's universal, not sinister. Egypt is steeped in religion, myth, and all kinds of craziness; most Egyptians don't hold a strictly secular, "logical" view of the world either, and no one calls them "racist" for it. From my time living in Cairo, people attributed most things to Israel and god, lol.
I also don't get tying a whole continent (an arbitrary construct) to a single race. There's no such thing as "the African race."
Weird comment. Hammers and nails, imo.
This isn't recent either. When Tolkien put the lines about Orthanc and the Stone of Erech looking unearthly into the Lord of the Rings, he reflected on the early Medieval people and their superstitions regarding Roman ruins. "There once was a race of giants that built X" was a common idea, and fanciful medieval authors would invent all sorts of humanoids that weren't human and were responsible for various wonders or evils.
Burial mounds in Ireland (sídh) are linguistically associated with the "fair folk" (aos sí) until today.
> the text describes how Solomon was enabled to build his temple by commanding demons by means of a magical ring that was entrusted to him by the archangel Michael.
Yeah that’s super reliable…
Offtopic, but why do people hate raisins so much? No other dried fruit gets so much hate.
I would imagine it's something genetic like the reason why some people dislike coriander (which has been shown to be related to genetic sensitivity to aldehydes).
Otherwise I like raisins, just fine on their own or in trail mix :)
the fact that the easiest way to pile up a bunch of big rocks without it crumbling down is to have a wide base and a narrow top is seemingly forgotten.
Which is an underappreciated part. They didn't only build pyramids, it's just pyramids had a much higher chance of actually surviving the millennia so it looks like early human civilizations were weirdly obsessed with pyramids. You never hear any theories about how aliens built the Colossus of Rhodes, but the pyramids get it because they're still around.
Far more impressive than a pyramid IMO.
Well. Not really? Of course a lot of information is available but still there is a lot of open questions.
Just considering the Great Pyramid of Giza: was it built with an external or an internal ramp? What was the purpose of the so called “well shaft”? What was the purpose of the “grand gallery”? What about the “air shafts”? Is the restoration of the so called “great step” in the “grand gallery” historically accurate? What is going on with the “big void” and the “small void” seemingly indicated by the ScanPyramid data? How did those who dug the “robbers tunnel” know how deep the granite plugs are?
My point is that there are enough interesting questions even after one learns “all there is to know”. They are just not in the realm of “aliens?” but much more like “what order were the ramps removed?”
The glyphs of Peru had more to do with the off worlders. Such are how tribesmen “represented” their local identities to the sky peoples.
In ancient times, the Greys did in fact visit primitive tribes peoples. They introduced themselves, chatted for a bit.
The Hopi and other end of the world myths were instigated by these conversations. Without their intervention the world was to be consumed by nuclear fires before 2012.
Somehow I feel personally attacked.
https://www.earthasweknowit.com/pages/inca_construction
This article was a fantastic read, and thoroughly debunks a lot of ancient alien style stuff.
You should post it to HN for greater visibility instead of being buried in the comments.
Personally I expect US would be the leader. The reason is because over the last 50 years there have been lots of shows describing how and why Space Aliens built the pyramids. Some of these shows were well produced.
In the US, it seems we are at the point if a show is based on fantasy, it is believed as fact.
There are major gaps in all explanations provided and there are a huge array of interesting but unprovable theories. People fill those gaps with whatever is compelling, but really, none are good enough to prove anything definitively and that includes the academic explanations.
It's entirely possible that we may never have the definitive answer for how they were built or even exactly why, and will have to live with the mystery. But humans rarely will accept that conclusion and we would rather invent certainty than put up with open questions.
Is that what we're calling it now?
I was extremely suspicious, and pasted the text into Pangram, said 100% AI generated (and yes, I trust Pangram as they have extremely low rates of false positives).
The shaduf, which is a hand-operated lever with a bucket, to lift water from rivers and canals for irrigation.
The Nile River annually flooded which was monitored because it determined agricultural success.
As well, the Nile served as a transportation route. Huge stone blocks transported through and evidence suggests that canals and harbours were built near some pyramid complexes to help move materials closer to construction sites.
https://aeraweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/aeragram15_1-...
Clever people. Not as advanced as the Romans but they had technology and prospered for a long while.
Ancestors were great. I just want a plan of how to do it.
but refleting uppon: maybe "aliens" are another name for a kind of ignorance spreading around. basic science and history simply gone. Not so funny to think about.
I mean even if you could people would still believe whatever they want… must be tiring for sure.