Did the ANCIENT BUILDERS Know How to SOFTEN SOLID STONE?

a reply to: aorAki
I do not need any help i have no plans of building any pyramids. but hey i will give you a call if something comes up.

originally posted by: skalla
a reply to: Jarocal

You are absolutely right

Unfortunately until people actually start to learn an ancient/traditional craft, many are typically unaware of what can be achieved in what time and the reaction is often "but that cannot be done" due to their being unaware of the tricks and techniques.

I smack stones with a hammer day in and day out. Most construction now in aAmerica is only veneer over a wooden skeleton. 90%+ of that is a manufactured veneer (printed concrete). While the manufactured veneer stone is more brittle than a natural veneer there is no grain tobit as with a natural stone. A real stone you can look at and see exactly how it wants to split. Construction goals are different today than in the past also. Cob, battle and daub structures were cheap and fast to build but required a bit more maintenance than a stone structure which had a really long life but required a lot more resource investment at the outset. If you look at todays construction methods mostl parts are considered 25-50 year products. The standardization through building codes has not increased safety only raised the cost of construction. If you visit southern Virginia you can see log cabins with cob or lime chinking built 200 years ago in as good of shape as a modern home built in tthe 1980's in tthe same area. Granted The lack of running water or an indoor privy would be the first thing to stand out to most people, but the methods if construction jump out at me more.

The "softened stone" claim is an early 20th century tale. It does not come down to us from the ancient Andeans. Even if the folklore related by Bingham came from native Andeans, they were far removed from the ancients generations and long lost the secret of their forebear's methods. Who's to say that modern Andeans weren't simply connecting two unrelated events - the shaping of the ancient stones by some lost method and the use of an alkaline plant by a species of bird to apparently 'soften' stone? It's similar to how medieval Arabs believed giants built Baalbek or Greeks and Romans believed the ancient cyclopean walls in the Aegean were built by a race of one-eyed giants. People over generations lose sight of how something was done and in their imagination they invent wilder and wilder tales.

The ancient Andeans left clues as to how they did it - those clues are all over in their quarries and left chipped into the walls themselves, that speak of a refined if not labor-intensive stone working method using hammer stones of different sizes.

A priest named Jose de Acosta, traveling with conquistadors, wrote in 1568 :

‘All this was done with much manpower and much suffering in the work, for to fit one stone to the other, until they were adjusted, it was necessary to try the fit many times.’

Garcilaso de la Vega wrote in 1609:

[the Incas] ‘had no other tools to work the stones than some black stones ... with which they dressed the stone by pounding rather than cutting’

(source: Scientific American: Inca Stonemasonry )

To the Spanish explorers then the "secret" was the use of hammer stones to 'cut' and shape the blocks, which I would argue is not an intuitive method grasped by the non-stone worker - we want to believe saws or lasers or machinery cut those blocks, but not hammer stones. Even where the evidence is overwhelming to the use of hammer stones, such as in ancient Egypt, people still find it hard to believe that was how they did it.

I did hear two different stories to support this theory. The first was about a bird in the Amazon that makes a hollow in solid rock by rubbing the sap from a certain plant, that then softened the stone. The second was an archeologist that found a jar and accidentally knocked it over on solid granite. When he returned, the rock beneath the spilled liquid was as soft as putty. Both incidents occurred in South America.

Here is one link from ATS regarding to what i had mentioned from page 1 on this topic.

www.abovetopsecret.com...


It's a very interesting read...

I'm not here to argue but in this thread you have put forward an argument that it's easy to do the things in this thread with stone or with a ''simple copper drill" then you say this

originally posted by: Hanslune

originally posted by: douglas5
a reply to: Hanslune

I do not believe the locals did it the way we are told , it is one thing moving a rock but quite another to drill a round hole in anything back in pre history.

It is the fact WE CANNOT recreate some of those structures today if we are so bright why is that
it even stumped the great Sir Flinders Petrie

Those AE techniques and the craftsmen who did it are obviously long gone

I don't think you can have it both ways, either we know and we can replicate with ease or we don't and the techniques are long gone.

I've also seen numerous mentions to scientists, I am a believer in science but the sheer amount of question marks over Egyptian History, the pyramids and the access given, along with some of the people who have been given access.

Certainly raises questions, until we have ALL the facts, most are educated guesses at best. (that isn't including actual science like carbon dating etc)

a reply to: Taggart

I don't consider it 'having it both ways'.

The actual techniques themselves, forged through generations of hand-me-down knowledge are no longer around, but their tools are, as well as records of them using these tools, as the following links show (only a small amount of the many available):

Statue bro?

Ancient workers

craftsmen


....and cetera. There are tons of images available.

I have always been of the opinion that something must have been done to alter the physical state of all these large stone works throughout ancient times. The guy who built the coral castle said he had figured it out. Perhaps when the properties of the stone are changed it is then easy to cut them with fine rope much the way clay is cut with wire. This could easily explain the straight line cuts and holes in stone.

a reply to: Tybrus

I'm being pedantic, but if you had an infinitely long piece of string, sand and water, then you could saw through granite with it.

You can cut rock into slabs with just a plank of wood as a saw - it was done so in medieval time with sandstone and limestone i believe, plus ofc copper saws and tubular drill bits were certainly used by many cultures, just as a medium to hold grits/sand that act as the cutting agent.

Vitrification.


Its possible that these sites were hit with tremendous amounts of energy via Lighting. There's a village in Brazil that in our modern world receives 10,000 lighting strikes/year.


Its probably worth asking - were the ancients trying to attract it with the placement/materials used at these sites all over the world.? It sure would look cool !

Other than typical stone working methods and such, it could be possible to pre-treat a hard rock surface with an acid. Get something like salicyclic acid (from plants) dissolved in an alcohol or sap such as pine tar, and prep the stone you're going to remove by coating it with the stuff. It should leach in after being left on for a day or so. Then just grind or pound the heck out of the partially acid-dissolved parts with rocks of the same hardness. Not making the rock "soft" as in being malleable like clay, but rather making the rock soft as in being able to remove a lot of material easier and without it shattering. A treated rock should be more crumbly like a softer sandstone if I'm thinking rignt in how it should work. Still would be a stone-work process though, and it would take some trial and error to know how long to leave the paste on to soften it to a certain depth.

If you have enough plain ol' aspirin, you could probably grind it to a powder and dissolve it in turpentine or denatured alcohol. (It also dissolves in water, but not as good.) It's also the same stuff in wart remover or skin exfoliant, so you don't want to get it on yourself either as it'll eventually make your skin peel - wear some gloves if trying to dissolve rocks with it.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Absolutely fascinating! Great find. Thanks!

In researching your named plant, I discovered it also grows in North Africa and it might well have been used by the Egyptians as well!

a reply to: jeep3r

Corrected by Hanslune.

originally posted by: deadeyedick
So to recap the post I am just full of it.

That pretty much recaps all of your posts on ATS, at least the ones I've read. You shouldn't make assertions like that when you don't actually know what you're talking about. Talk is cheap.

originally posted by: raymundoko
a reply to: jeep3r

I don't think those are what you think they are.

I believe the one on the left is Tura Sandstone and the one on the right is Limestone.

If the one on the left is Menkaure's pyramid and shows the first 16 courses it is red granite, above that they switched to tura limestone. The other I'm unsure of but if its from Cusco it is probably andesite.

a reply to: Hanslune

Ahh, I didn't know that about Menkaure's Pyramid. Thanks. I confused the pic on the right with Pumapunku in Bolivia.

originally posted by: Hanslune
a reply to: Barcs

It's not the scientists' faults that they won't entertain a hypothesis without evidence.

A good adviser and dissertation panel will beat that outta ya pretty quick (the idea you can present an hypothesis without evidence)

The person I responded to was suggesting that scientists should actively promote the said hypothesis as if it's true and are idiots for not considering it. Obviously every hypothesis starts without evidence, but then you need to test it and either falsify it or confirm it. There is no way at all to test this hypothesis, so even calling it a hypothesis is stretching. It's really just a guess. It may be right, but there isn't a heck of a lot to base it on, at least not anything objective. It's all just lack of understanding. People can't comprehend how they did it, so they must have had advanced technology. In the old days people couldn't understand lightning and thunder so they attributed it to god/gods. Now we know better. It's the same concept.

a reply to: JamesTB

I saw this article this morning and thought it belonged with your thread:

Thirteen-angle stone discovered in ancient Inca wall reveals incredible skill of masons

Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed an ancient Inca wall during excavations at the Incahuasi archaeological site in the Huancavelica Region of Peru, which includes a precisely carved stone with thirteen angles, enabling it to fit perfectly among the surrounding blocks. Peru’s Ministry of Culture announced that the wall formed part of a sophisticated hydraulic system.

The Inca civilization is well-known for its advanced masonry work, much of which can still be seen today in Machu Picchu and Sacsayhuaman in Peru. Their large dry stone walls display huge blocks that had been carefully cut to fit together tightly without mortar and with levels of precision unmatched anywhere else in the Americas. The stones are so closely spaced that a single piece of paper will not fit between many of the stones. This precision, combined with the rounded corners of the blocks, the variety of their interlocking shapes, and the way the walls lean inward have puzzled scientists for decades. The method used to match precisely the shape of a stone with the adjacent stones is still unknown.

source

a reply to: Barcs

Every Hypothesis starts with evidence actually...

Perhaps you aren't familiar with the scientific method and simply the definitions of words, but a Scientific Hypothesis is an educated guess based on knowledge of a subject and observations associated with said subject.

I can't just go to a review board and say "Hey, Galaxy is held together with silly string" because I have no evidence to support that.

Once you test a Scientific Hypothesis through the scientific method (e.g. additional observations, predictions etc), you can then progress it to a Scientific Theory.

a reply to: JamesTB


Some Lost Technology for sure


I had Nice discussions about this in other threads Here on ATS

Some Stone look like it was Melted or Softened or even Seam's if they were from a Cookie Cutter like "Master pattern" Mold !

Like this for Example

The Famed Puma Punku H Block's



Seam's like as if it was from a pattern mold form plate




Saksaywaman
en.wikipedia.org...


These Looks Like, it came from a Pressed in Pattern mold instead of Chiseled/Carved



Just Like it was Play Doh ! LOL

The Ancient Tools were Like this on Site.. eh...?



Well maybe not so Primitive like the Play - Doh Factory Set ...