Earlier quoted context omitted.
links?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_Merer among many others.
I thought these were just about limestone blocks being transported from quarries in Tura to Giza.
Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
81–90 of 194 posts
Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
#82The classic Mcsweeney's for the HN crowd is "E-mail Addresses That Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone" https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-that-wo...
My father in law has email address that is about his small dog. He's Scottish and his dog growls a lot. So his address is weegrrrr.
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 :-)
Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ancient Aliens conflates two very different ideas. 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 sp…
Have we actually forgotten how to land to the moon? That sounds very fishy, I’m pretty skeptical that’s not the case, that was done at a time where we had good records and still have access to them. And it’s close enough to current time that people who worked on it are still alive (not all of course). Coming from musk makes me believe that’s not true, he’s far from a reliable narrator
There are two parts to manufacturing technology: The written knowledge of what to build, and the process knowledge of all the gotchas and tricks and skill that people experienced in their craft rarely write down. (In many cases the great craftspeople with the knowledge are not great teachers or writers). Manufacturing an object is not like compiling code, where if you pick the right inputs and machines you get the same output. The actual process of building is so full of domain knowledge and variability that ten different people following the same written instructions can get wildly different results.
Derek from SmarterEveryDay ran into this when trying to get a product manufactured in the US and shared his experience: https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY?t=1386
Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
#84“People dramatically underestimate what thousands of organized humans can accomplish when they are adequately fed, aggressively supervised, and denied alternative career paths.“
Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
#85> This feels deeply insulting considering humans also created taxation, organized warfare, and raisins.
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).
Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the "steal an ancient roman baby" premise. The "roman citizen" example is not as strong. Cognitive ability is not just genetics. The grown-up roman would be missing a lot of advantages during their upbringing that weren't available back then. Also, limiting it to just "citizens" means limiting it to their upper class. Compared to Roman times, we've had pretty big advances in nutrition, healthcare, educat…
Life expectancy didn't change that much, what changed is infant mortality. And for cognitive ability: plenty of firsthand accounts from Enlightenment thinkers about thesuperior reasoning abilities of average members of hunter-gatherer/American Indian tribes compared to the typical European at the time, and they arguably already had better access to nutrition/education/healthcare. Cognitive ability is for sure related…
> Life expectancy didn't change that much, what changed is infant mortality.
Life expectancy means at birth commonly. Life expectancy changed because infant and child mortality changed.
Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
#87"I personally can't conceive of how one might built this, and I must be a million times smarter than people 4500 years ago, ergo people didn't build this." is how the Ancient Aliens theory always sounds to me.
There's a ton of people that, for some reason, just can't grok that humans have been largely behaviorally and biologically identical for the past 200k years. 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,…
It has always been my understanding that if talking about homo sapiens sapiens: then if you could „snatch“ a newborn from 200k years ago and raise it just like any other human baby today, there is nothing in terms of biology etc. that would stop said baby from becoming an engineer, astronaut, formula one race driver, lawyer, programmer, or CEO (or any other modern profession for that matter).
Never read up if that pet theory of mine has any merit, though.
Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't downvote you. But, I'm not saying that humans haven't learned anything, but that cognitively we haven't changed. A roman citizen has the exact same brain capacity to reason and adapt as we do today. There is zero separation from ancient human vs. modern human in that aspect. You are conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence. That roman looking at bird entrails to predict the future w…
I agree with the "steal an ancient roman baby" premise. The "roman citizen" example is not as strong. Cognitive ability is not just genetics. The grown-up roman would be missing a lot of advantages during their upbringing that weren't available back then. Also, limiting it to just "citizens" means limiting it to their upper class. Compared to Roman times, we've had pretty big advances in nutrition, healthcare, educat…
Same religions. Same political structures. Same engineering - we've only recently duplicated their concrete, and man, could they build roads and aqueducts. Yeah, they had a dodgy number system, but they had military and political organizations that lasted 1000+ years. They had worldwide trade, and unified far more territory than anybody today.
Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
#89Reminds me of my career explaining how to build simple webpages without using large abstraction libraries/frameworks for JavaScript.
Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the "steal an ancient roman baby" premise. The "roman citizen" example is not as strong. Cognitive ability is not just genetics. The grown-up roman would be missing a lot of advantages during their upbringing that weren't available back then. Also, limiting it to just "citizens" means limiting it to their upper class. Compared to Roman times, we've had pretty big advances in nutrition, healthcare, educat…
Life expectancy didn't change that much, what changed is infant mortality. And for cognitive ability: plenty of firsthand accounts from Enlightenment thinkers about thesuperior reasoning abilities of average members of hunter-gatherer/American Indian tribes compared to the typical European at the time, and they arguably already had better access to nutrition/education/healthcare. Cognitive ability is for sure related…
Plato begs to differ re: philosophy. Ancient people could memorize staggeringly more than folks today. They probably also paid (far) more attention to their surroundings. Like Rangers in D&D, they could read blades of grass and state what/when walked by...