The Ancient Methods of Softening Stone

originally posted by: Jarocal

People don't honestly believe all the surfaces for the blocks were finished like an outward face do they? On a wall with a rubble infill between two wall courses the backcut wall will last better as the infill settles over time.

Even adobe blocks were not traditionally completely flat on all faces due to the method of casting.

I can imagine the speculation that would arise if evidence of a timbrel or Catalan arch ever arises in an ancient site.

Believers don't look at the back and sides, which I have found hard to find (images of) myself. Certainly Roman and Greek walls and stones tended not to be finished and I've seen lots of those. For our lurkers many 'cheaper' Roman walls were often built with dressed stone on the outside and rubble/rubble concrete in the center.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: 6Taco6Smell6

If these people possessed such an amazing technology, why wouldn't they put the stones in molds and make uniformly sized bricks?

Only the crazies make claims that involve softening stone to the degree that you can mold it.

The problem with the idea is that the chemicals involved can soften stone, but they can't harden it.

Stone treated with Oxalic acid (and other such stone "softeners") becomes crumbly. It doesn't "harden" back into stone.

If any ancient culture anywhere ever used this claimed technique, it might have helped them shape the exterior surfaces of a stone. But it wouldn't quarry it or give it any presumably necessary overall shape.

By that last I mean the jig-saw type fittings of Inca stonework couldn't have been accomplished that way.

Harte

a reply to: theantediluvian

It is a fascinating photograph. At the bottom we have a remnant of a building by one culture with a high level of technological advancement. At the top of the wall we see a later culture trying to rebuild the wall with the diminished technology they had. I believe the bottom of the wall is prior to some cataclysm, and the top of the wall is by a culture that followed after said cataclysm.

One can find similar evidence all around the world. Even Jerusalem is clearly built on top of the huge stone ruins of a far more technologically advanced civilisation. I've always thought of Jerusalem as Baalbek with multiple layers of inferior civilisations piled upon it.

a reply to: theantediluvian

...but as you look higher up the wall, you can observe a gradual transition as less and less time was spent finishing the stones until at the very top it looks like any other dry stacked stone.

I agree with Kapriti and others above. Could it be that the original was built a long long time ago and the top wore away and was replaced by a civilisation which did not know how to make the perfectly-fitting stones used at the base? You or I would probably just pile the best rocks we could find on top if the structure was crumbling or disintergrating at the top. Dry stone walling is another art which is not as easy as it looks.

I feel that the stone was shaped to fit the holes not dissolved and rehardened. They probably moved these huge stones by "magic" and not by physical grunt work. If you had to use people to move stones, you would make your buildings out of many smaller stones not huge 50-ton monsters which took a lot of effort and organisation to move from A to B. Smaller stones can be moved by men/women/children of almost any age. "magic" is technology or techniques we are not yet aware of.

Kapriti & Qmantoo

What do you feel is the reason that absolutely no evidence of this 'other' civilization(s) has ever been found and that the rocks you are associating with it are in fact associated with other cultures and civilization?

How does one explain this contradiction?