The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
141–149 of 149 posts
Re: The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually the opposite is true. YOU must be unfamiliar with the architecture and large projects in general if you Think there’s more to it than well understood ancient technology. The idea that it’s a mystery how the ancients built large projects like this and Easter island is simply modern chauvinism.
Even in the face of the new evidence of structures miles below the pyramids, we have to have this debate? Or the chamber that was “theorized” by crackpots, included into Assassins Creed based on said “crackpots”, and then revealed to actually exist by sonography? I think it’s far more sycophantic to insist that the ancient Egyptians were “primitive” rather than “advanced” when it was built, but hey, I’m against the g…
You’re saying there’s evidence of structures miles below which pyramids? How were these structures detected? Who discovered them, using what methods?
Re: The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
#143Decades ago, I read a book (written, I think, around 1890) about Atlantis. 99% of the evidence it gave was, of course, bogus. But the one piece that seemed reasonable was an account of depth soundings by the SS Great Eastern when it laid the second cable across the Atlantic in 1866. I haven't seen a recent account of those soundings, but the chart in the book did show the Atlantic to be shallower in the middle--which…
Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis:_The_Antediluvian_Wor... (1882) by Ignatius Donnelly.
Re: The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
#144That does not make the existence of Atlantis a mere fiction. With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters. The Sumerians themselves claimed they received their knowledge from a man who visited them by the sea (fish-man like creature) on the aftermath of the great flood which may have buried plenty of Atlantis-like civilizations which could be the missin…
Re: The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
#145That does not make the existence of Atlantis a mere fiction. With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters. The Sumerians themselves claimed they received their knowledge from a man who visited them by the sea (fish-man like creature) on the aftermath of the great flood which may have buried plenty of Atlantis-like civilizations which could be the missin…
What exactly is "missing" in understanding how the Egyptians built the pyramids? Why is it so hard to understand how a population of millions with a ton of unused labor during flood season built a bunch of scaffolding and moved a bunch of rocks around?
Some of the columns, obelisks and statues are very large and heavy. Moving them would be a serious challenge, but not impossible. Some weigh 100 tons, one or two are much heavier again. The unfinished obelisk in the Aswan quarry is 1,000 tons, which begins to stretch credulity.
Consider that many columns and obelisks were stolen by the Romans: most squares in Rome seem to have an Egyptian obelisk; the Pantheon has single-piece granite columns from Egypt (topped with Roman capitals). However, the Romans did have iron, capstans and pulleys.
But there are several unexplained aspects of ancient Egyptian artifacts:
- Lower casing stones, facing on nearby 'temples' and internal chambers (often below the actual pyramid or mastaba), are built of precise megalithic granite. The granite blocks often fit together with surprising precision, and have features such as 'turning the corner' which require extra, strictly unnecessary, work (interestingly, also seen in Andean megalithic building).
- Granite boxes in lower chambers are large, heavy and precisely machined to high tolerances (flatness, parallelism).
- Vases found in lower tunnels and chambers (esp. under Djoser's step pyramid at Saqqara) are very precisely machined granite (circles, curves, symmetry, thinness) often to a few 1/1000 inch. They usually have two handles, meaning they cannot be simply lathed - and dynastic Egyptians did not even have the lathe.
- There are many single-piece statues and columns made from granite, with precisely machined curved surfaces and remarkably accurate symmetry.
- There are no known tools from dynastic Egypt which can reproduce precise curved surfaces in granite. Copper chisels and sand-lubricated copper saws or tube drills can work cylindrical holes and planar cuts in granite - but they take a very long time, and consume huge quantities of valuable copper. They cannot cut precise curved surfaces, or hollow out vases. Tube drill cores from ancient Egypt show spiral grooves, which cannot be made by copper+sand tools. The dynastic Egyptians did not have the wheel, the lathe, the potter's wheel, pulleys, capstans or any iron tools.
- No lower-level granite chambers, granite boxes or granite vases, have any decoration or writing. No bodies or mummies have been found in pristine boxes, although one or two have been found in chambers known to be opened in later periods. There are no hieroglyphics. Some perfect granite statues do have hieroglyphics carved into them, but these are clearly later and lower quality than the original work (the hieroglyphics are usually just a royal cartouche 'claiming' the artifact).
- It is strange that the most perfect granite artifacts are presumed to be the oldest artifacts. Later dynastic Egyptian periods did not reproduce that level of technique and precision. They worked in softer limestone, and their jars are all soft alabaster. However the oldest artifacts were created, the skills to make them were somehow lost.
- There is no solid dating of the oldest chambers, boxes, vases, obelisks or statues. There is no organic material for carbon dating. The lower chambers are often subterranean, and could have existed before the pyramids. Most archaeological timelines assume that a rough scratched royal cartouche means the whole artifact or building was created by that pharaoh. There is no doubt that dynastic Egyptians used, repaired and extended older structures, but there's no evidence they originated all of them.
- Finally, I tentatively mention the most famous controversy: weathering on exposed limestone surfaces, esp. Sphinx enclosure, but also pyramid temple complexes; and astronomical alignments that make most sense for prehistoric configuration of the equinoxes.
* [Here the word 'granite' means usually red granite, but also quartz, dolerite, andesite, basalt or other very hard igneous rocks.]
** [There is one caveat about their copper, sourced from Sinai and Red Sea coast, which had high impurities of arsenic and nickel that may have made it harder than pure copper, but not as hard as later copper-tin bronze.]
The final 'modern mystery' is why simple questions about known sites are not answered by non-intrusive scanning and excavation. Two of many examples:
- Chambers under the Sphinx and tunnels under the causeway from the Sphinx. There are openings of shafts clearly visible. A drill was put down in front of the Sphinx, it hit red granite, but nothing was done to investigate.
- The labyrinth at Hawara, which has several Greek/Roman eyewitness accounts, and even an old GPR survey validating the story, but it has not been excavated.
The result is that recent surveys are attempted using satellite sensing or other remote techniques that do not require sanctioned presence on the sites themselves. The results are somewhere between fanciful and ridiculous, but a simple GPR/seismic survey would be an obvious corrective to any misinformation.
It's also not a question of money. Firstly, plenty of rich donors and crowd-sourcing would sponsor such work, and secondly, any uncovered sites and artifacts would generate tourist revenue.
Re: The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
#146Damn some of the comments here are really depressing. I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging by some of these comments. Way too much regurgitation of long-since debunked pseudo-scientific nonsense. Atlantis was never real and anyone who thinks it was is a moron. If there were truly some sort of globe-spanning advanced civilization existing…
It is much harder to prove something is not real, when there is no evidence to support it in the first place. It is effectively proving a negative which requires an onerus amount of proof. The absence of evidence doesn't support a null hypothesis in stochastic environments. This is a classic cognitive bias.
Those that do so without proper basis, are most likely deluding themselves than actually participating in critical thought and rational measure based in external reality.
There are a number of anomalies in the historic record, Graham Hancock has pointed out a number of them, and to date there is no explanation for much of the evidence he has pointed out. In fact some of it points to fantastical levels of tools that in some cases exceed current day processes. The Oseiron for example which can't be pumped out with modern equipment.
You conveniently forget the bronze-age collapse which is attributed to a seafaring people alongside chaos, and the burning of the library of Alexandria destroyed some of the most dated records.
You rely on a number of cognitive biases, your suppositions are not supported, and anyone that has to resort to invective and name calling isn't someone who is operating from a rational perspective that is capable of critical thought.
The latter most entirely undermines any argument you might make.
Re: The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> nobody is perplexed about how they moved stones Plenty of people, including myself, are perplexed about how they moved stones. Specifically, how 60--80 ton stones were moved up .
Timber, rope, time, and effort. That's it. That's all there is to it. Nothing more. It isn't complicated, it's leverage, ramps, muscles, and patience. It is likely that the entire construction program was planned around the 10-20 years it took to move the 80-ton weight-relieving stones much like how today I plan engineering and manufacturing efforts around the components with the longest lead times. There were very f…
Inca (1438-1570), Wari (600-1100) or Tiwanaku (300-1100)? Or some previous civilization?
Re: The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly is "missing" in understanding how the Egyptians built the pyramids? Why is it so hard to understand how a population of millions with a ton of unused labor during flood season built a bunch of scaffolding and moved a bunch of rocks around?
My daughter is an archeologist and this is one of her bugbears, the idea that the Egyptians couldn't possibly have built something so huge on their own. Even though we're pretty clear on it, the originally racist idea that they were too primitive has survived long enough to just become "common knowledge" with the explicit racism receding.
Re: The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
#149[dead]
It goes so far that district attorney from Slovakia, who is a member of the sect is going after Czech journalists who uncover them.
They have tool to generate videos on any esoteric/conspiracy topic with AI assistance.
Sadly I can't link much English sources.
- https://vsquare.org/disinformation-whitewashing-russia-allat...