Accepted theory or timeline of human development

originally posted by: Xtrozero
uld cut what, or chip what. For the big granite obelisk they actually used dolerite hammer-balls
to pound and pulverize the granite downward in order to free the sides of the block. None of this is speculation as there are 100s of used dolerite hammer-balls in every granite quarry.

It's true they are there, but that might have been just the finishing stage.

When you sharpen a knife using a wet stone, for example, you use a coarse stone for the general shape, and then a smoother stone to get the edge just right.

The Egyptians liked to get things just right, so it makes sense they would have smoothed it out with dolemite.

That in no way proves they used dolemite for the rough shaping, though.

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

I think this is exactly where the thinking is totally off. As far off as can possibly be.

It didn't matter that they had a lot of food...the world population was very small and spread-out into small groups with zero communication between groups. Zero transfer of any knowledge learned. We didn't see an expansion of the population until after the food source was stabilized better.

I don't know why you think large populations are the driving force here?

It's more important to know how educated they are, and what direction their creativities are geared toward.

Many of the most advanced machines devised during the Medieval era were torture devices. Huge waste of creativity!

But instead of needing like 80 or 90% of your population to do menial work all day in the fields, so the remaining 10 or 20% could specialize in doing intellectual tasks (and figuring out ways to keep the 80-90% from being mad they have to do boring work all day).

Hunter/gather life was not as easy as you think... They spent much of their day doing it, and bringing down something like a mammoth brought great peril too. Humans were not the apex predator they are today, far from it back then.

Modern hunter/gatherers do that.

And you're definitely right the humans weren't the apex predators. There are so many fractured (and healed) bones found from that era!

But the main trick with mammoths is they can't climb hills. Hunters didn't attempt to bring a mammoth down then and there. Just pelt it with a few spears, and retreat to safety.

Their weapons were focused on inflicting a wound that would kill the mammoth in a few days. (In many cases the spear tip was actually designed to break off and stay stuck in the wound.) The humans could just patiently track the herd until they caught up with the corpse.

And, being the geniuses that they were, they realized it made sense to leave most of the world to nature, and only build a few settlements in strategic places. Not to have more kids than they could educate. They would have invested a great deal more education in each child.

Like American Indians??...lol They were not like this at all either... You are speculating on something with zero substance of any kind, so pretty much a fairy tale. They were not geniuses either...Also what education did they teach?

American natives had to travel to follow their prey. Different era.

The world as we know it today simply doesn't have the same kinds of creatures to hunt.

True, but agriculture strongly selects for stupidity.
A highly intelligent person can't do mindless menial work all day long and keep their sanity. They would die, and I am sure many did.

It brought more freedom to think... Open up more free hours in a day... Created year round food stability... There just isn't anything to suggest what you are saying is even remotely true.

Sure. Except the 10% or so at the top would kill you for it if you tried to out think them.


All of the early finds that go into religion show it was focused on "getting people to accept a harder way of life". Reinforcing the social hierarchy. Not questioning your status. Just accepting you are a worker, and those top 10% are the thinkers.

They were dumbing their society down on purpose.

Why didn't they develop writing 100k years ago as example... were is the 100k year-old stone tablets with writing on them or the 100k year-old metal tools. Seems smart people would want metal tools at least to hunt...

Copper finds go back pretty far

www.copper.org...#:~:text=Copper%20was%20first%20used%20by%20man%20over%2010%2C000%20years%20ago.&text=By%203000%20 B.C.%2C%20silver%20and,%2C%20armor%2C%20and%20decorative%20objects.

The earliest copper find is 10,000 years ago. Although the Younger Dryas is still earlier at 12,000, meaning we can't prove it was used in the ice age.

However, to rule out its prior use we'd have to be assuming it was discovered at the very dawn of the agricultural age.

a reply to: Xtrozero

I would be interested to see that....as i disagree with your analysis. But have had enough imbibements to not be able to defend my disagreement.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

That in no way proves they used dolemite for the rough shaping, though.

Well yes there is since there are 1/2 finished ones that show how they did it...

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan

I would be interested to see that....as i disagree with your analysis. But have had enough imbibements to not be able to defend my disagreement.

At some point basic survival became a thing of the past for many of us... Look back at some primitive societies in modern times and it wasn't fun and games for them compared to their advance counter parts. Pretty much all day was getting and preparing food...lol I think we take too much for granted today to really understand how hard it was to live...

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

That in no way proves they used dolemite for the rough shaping, though.

Well yes there is since there are 1/2 finished ones that show how they did it...

Actually, that was a pretty good point. It prompted me to look into it further.

The authoritative view is, in fact, that dolemite pounders were not used for the basic shape, but only for the small scale part of the shaping.

They did the large scale shaping by drilling holes, and inserting wood into the holes. Then poured water on the wood, which caused it to expand and break off large pieces of granite. (Modern granite workers pound iron spikes into the granite, and that splits off sections. So the two methods are actually pretty similar to each other.)


www.geocaching.com...

I never believed Dolemite pounders were how they did the whole thing, because that would just be too silly!

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous


Actually, that was a pretty good point. It prompted me to look into it further.

The authoritative view is, in fact, that dolemite pounders were not used for the basic shape, but only for the small scale part of the shaping.

They did the large scale shaping by drilling holes, and inserting wood into the holes. Then poured water on the wood, which caused it to expand and break off large pieces of granite. (Modern granite workers pound iron spikes into the granite, and that splits off sections. So the two methods are actually pretty similar to each other.)

The wood technic was used by the Romans I think. In the picture below you can see the round groves on the floor and sides and this was done by pounding their way down in lines of 100s around the obelisk as they would cut the rough outline to create narrow path round it to work.



As I said...they were master stone workers and knew what to use for all tasks at hand. If you were cutting squares for building then drilling wood expansion makes sense, if you were cutting this below out of solid rock you would need to use the pounding method.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
As I said...they were master stone workers and knew what to use for all tasks at hand. If you were cutting squares for building then drilling wood expansion makes sense, if you were cutting this below out of solid rock you would need to use the pounding method.

I believe the wedge method was what they used on sedimentary stone, which cleaves easily in both horizontal and vertical planes.

You can see this at the limestone quarries at Giza:



Along the left face are holes made for inserting the wedges. The idea of using water is purely speculative, it wouldn't be required but it would save manpower that could be used for something else. Also it would be easier to wet a bunch of wedges almost simultaneously - they would swell at the same rate - than it would be to have a line of hammerers there trying to wedge the stone all at the same rate. Different rates would waste stone since you might not get a good, even horizontal (or vertical) fracture if you weren't careful about it.

Harte

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous


Actually, that was a pretty good point. It prompted me to look into it further.

The authoritative view is, in fact, that dolemite pounders were not used for the basic shape, but only for the small scale part of the shaping.

They did the large scale shaping by drilling holes, and inserting wood into the holes. Then poured water on the wood, which caused it to expand and break off large pieces of granite. (Modern granite workers pound iron spikes into the granite, and that splits off sections. So the two methods are actually pretty similar to each other.)

The wood technic was used by the Romans I think. In the picture below you can see the round groves on the floor and sides and this was done by pounding their way down in lines of 100s around the obelisk as they would cut the rough outline to create narrow path round it to work.

The Romans had no need to use that method, because they had iron tools.

This is a modern day granite cutter. He just drives wedges into it, and it naturally splits along its fault lines.

www.youtube.com...

To do it without iron you would need interesting methods. We know the Egyptians could drill using tube drills, so inserting wood into the hole after drilling it would be a logical next step.

As I said...they were master stone workers and knew what to use for all tasks at hand. If you were cutting squares for building then drilling wood expansion makes sense, if you were cutting this below out of solid rock you would need to use the pounding method.

The grooves on the floor tell us they had the common sense to smooth out the ground that would become their work space.


The big issue I have with the whole idea of pounding out the whole structure is:

1) - Worker injuries. Too many workers would wreck their joints, and then be useless.

2) - Water. Just consider how much water you would need to bring out there if that many people are slaving away all day long in the heat.

But if these guys are artisans, doing mostly the finishing work, they're going to be working at a slower pace (because you don't work artisans to death.) And there won't be as much of that in general.

The idea the Pharaoh is entrusting his reputation and legacy to slaves is as antiquated as the idea that the Great Pyramid itself was built by slaves. (We have proof the workers who did work on that were NOT slaves.)

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

The grooves on the floor tell us they had the common sense to smooth out the ground that would become their work space.

Each grove is a pounding area. You can't split rock when you have no outward side. The obelisk were not cut like they cut the softer builder blocks.

1) - Worker injuries. Too many workers would wreck their joints, and then be useless.

2) - Water. Just consider how much water you would need to bring out there if that many people are slaving away all day long in the heat.

Really? lol

They worked in groups of 3, not just one guy pounding, they had technic.... Its just manual labor...How did they build the railroad in America...brute force manual labor. Don't underestimate the power of our ancestors.

But if these guys are artisans, doing mostly the finishing work, they're going to be working at a slower pace (because you don't work artisans to death.) And there won't be as much of that in general.

The idea the Pharaoh is entrusting his reputation and legacy to slaves is as antiquated as the idea that the Great Pyramid itself was built by slaves. (We have proof the workers who did work on that were NOT slaves.)

I agree artisans doing the finish work and the brains behind it all, I think in many case not slaves just laborers doing their job they got paid for for the manual labor part. You really do not need to go back very far to see things built mainly on people's backs...

I bet working in the coal mines 60+ years ago was harder work over all.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
OK I agree, same with knowing how to work stone, but it was learned person to person...That is why places like guilds formed. I'm not sure your point here since of course they would have knowledge at basic levels like willow bark, now if you suggested they could cure cancer, as example, that would be different. This isn't some loss advancement from humans who were very advanced in the past...

That's not why guilds developed, they developed as means for the setting of quality and commercial standards and to fix pricing. They were not, as a rule, responsible for skills transfer or education, more enforcement. Inclusion or exclusion.

The point is that what our distant nomadic ancestors considered useful knowledge is different to what you or I consider useful knowledge but they are both knowledge and require learning. Teaching as a skill of parenting is very much a primate trait. What civilisation did is create specialisms, rather than everyone learning the same skills, or rather the skills they needed to survive, information was meted out on a "need-to-know" basis, I say civilisation but the process begins with shamanistic cultures which I suppose are more proto-civilisations having some of the features but not quite enough to qualify fully.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
Seems to be working for us today doesn't it? Just think about how simple farming and domesticating animals started about 8000 to 10,000 BC, but it wasn't until 5000BC we can say it really started to mature, so think about how far we have come in the last 6000 or 7000 years compared to the previous 200,000.

Does it? We're stuck with it either way, but progress isn't necessarily the same as sustainability. Success isn't merely a numbers game. Our success could as easily be interpreted as infestation to the point of pestilence. Up to about 10000 BC - clean air, clean water...trees abundant in nuts and fruit. Diverse game to hunt and plant seeds to harvest.

Since then?

originally posted by: Xtrozero
I would agree around 1000AD to 1400AD food most likely wasn't that good in some places like EU, so we can say EU sucked, but Africa/America was still relied heavily on hunter/gatherer though they did have some farming in places. Asia was much different than EU and they thrived quite well. When you say shorten life spans what are you talking about? About 30,000 years ago humans were lucky to hit 30...Even until 1800 40 was an average... So what exactly are you suggesting?

There has been a lot of recent research on this subject you may want to look at your sources. Early settlements and disease seem to have been a significant factors that inhibited good health. Poor nutrition was less to do with quanity than it was to do with quality - as in - variety. They ate lots of grain but not often all that much else. The vast majority of early farmers were reliant on hunting and gathering to supplement their diet but still, we got very short in stature for a while and our immune systems were compromised due to poor nutritional variety.

A Gravettian could very well expect to live to see their children to adulthood, possibly even the birth of a grandchild in a life span up to about 45 years.

In Ur and the farms in it's vicinty you were lucky to make it to 20, if you were a woman that would likely be less, perhaps with the birth of your first child. Even so, at that young age, your bones would already bear the signs of hard, repetitive labour. The bones of those living on the steppes, at the same time, as nomadic pastoralists, are longer lived and longer and stronger generally, enjoying twice the lifespan of the city dwellers and satellite villagers. Pastoralism definately appears to have been the win-win position agricultural speaking for all concerned. The grain city-state has always, it seems, been a costly endeavour for almost everyone involved.

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout

The point is that what our distant nomadic ancestors considered useful knowledge is different to what you or I consider useful knowledge but they are both knowledge and require learning. Teaching as a skill of parenting is very much a primate trait. What civilisation did is create specialisms, rather than everyone learning the same skills, or rather the skills they needed to survive, information was meted out on a "need-to-know" basis, I say civilisation but the process begins with shamanistic cultures which I suppose are more proto-civilisations having some of the features but not quite enough to qualify fully.

I'm not debating this point at all... My main point is there wasn't any advance civilizations outside of the normal flow of human advancement...i.e. no Atlantis with wonders we could only dream of...

Does it? We're stuck with it either way, but progress isn't necessarily the same as sustainability. Success isn't merely a numbers game. Our success could as easily be interpreted as infestation to the point of pestilence. Up to about 10000 BC - clean air, clean water...trees abundant in nuts and fruit. Diverse game to hunt and plant seeds to harvest.

And a lifespan of like 30 to 35 years... No clue of your point here...You live today in a totally contain environmental chamber , my house is 68 year round, we never experience the elements unless we want to. We eat 1000 things from all over the world our ancestors never seen, 1000s of different dishes... You and I are talking across a great distance, sharing ideas...as example...Your point above is they learned how to survive...well good on them, I hope so.

There has been a lot of recent research on this subject you may want to look at your sources. Early settlements and disease seem to have been a significant factors that inhibited good health. Poor nutrition was less to do with quanity than it was to do with quality - as in - variety. They ate lots of grain but not often all that much else. The vast majority of early farmers were reliant on hunting and gathering to supplement their diet but still, we got very short in stature for a while and our immune systems were compromised due to poor nutritional variety.

Isn't that what I basically said...

You are debating about a very short period in our history and very focused on EU, how about Asia, India, Africa, Americas...
But here we are today in an advancement hunter/gathers could never get too, even remotely... If your argument is we were always better off as hunter/gathers you are putting too much romance into the subject of what life was really like during that time. It was a hard short life anyway you look at it 100x more harder than yours or mine is..... People today can be as healthy as they want to be, or unhealthy...its their choice...

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout
Does it? We're stuck with it either way, but progress isn't necessarily the same as sustainability. Success isn't merely a numbers game. Our success could as easily be interpreted as infestation to the point of pestilence. Up to about 10000 BC - clean air, clean water...trees abundant in nuts and fruit. Diverse game to hunt and plant seeds to harvest.

And a lifespan of like 30 to 35 years... No clue of your point here...You live today in a totally contain environmental chamber , my house is 68 year round, we never experience the elements unless we want to. We eat 1000 things from all over the world our ancestors never seen, 1000s of different dishes... You and I are talking across a great distance, sharing ideas...as example...Your point above is they learned how to survive...well good on them, I hope so.

You can get pretty close to that with wood fires, too. My parents live pretty far outside of town and so they are able to use wood for their heat. I like to go there in winter, because it is very cozy. Even nicer than my apartment in the city.

You can fine tune your body temperature, by sitting closer or further away from the fire. Sometimes when it is just starting, I sit on top of the fireplace to warm up. Or I'll stand very near it a few minutes to warm up a lot, and then move away and cool down over time.

There has been a lot of recent research on this subject you may want to look at your sources. Early settlements and disease seem to have been a significant factors that inhibited good health. Poor nutrition was less to do with quanity than it was to do with quality - as in - variety. They ate lots of grain but not often all that much else. The vast majority of early farmers were reliant on hunting and gathering to supplement their diet but still, we got very short in stature for a while and our immune systems were compromised due to poor nutritional variety.

Isn't that what I basically said...

You are debating about a very short period in our history and very focused on EU, how about Asia, India, Africa, Americas...
But here we are today in an advancement hunter/gathers could never get too, even remotely... If your argument is we were always better off as hunter/gathers you are putting too much romance into the subject of what life was really like during that time. It was a hard short life anyway you look at it 100x more harder than yours or mine is..... People today can be as healthy as they want to be, or unhealthy...its their choice...

I think you are over romanticizing the Medieval era. A few elites might have had it good. But life sucked for the peasants. There is a good reason why Renaissance paintings depict "beautiful" women as being fat.

Modern farm machinery has made it so, in our culture, only a tiny fraction of the work force is needed to sow and bring in the harvest for everyone.

The "Haber Process" allows us to use electricity to mass produce ammonia pellets from air and water. So our fields produce per acre, quite a bit more than any medieval farmer could have dreamt of getting out of their lands.

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

The grooves on the floor tell us they had the common sense to smooth out the ground that would become their work space.

Each grove is a pounding area. You can't split rock when you have no outward side. The obelisk were not cut like they cut the softer builder blocks.

It's a valid point that digging out the trenches won't work with splitting methods very good.

Maybe you could drill many holes until the whole area looks like swiss cheese, and then smash it with rocks? (At this point maybe even softer rocks would work, so you're not wasting imported Dolemite.)

The need to import the dolemite from another quarry is also a strong reason to doubt they would use it for the rough shaping. Not unless they truly could not think of any other way.

I think part of my issue with this is it upsets me that people seem to be thinking the Egyptians were idiots.

You don't need to go full "Atlantis" to do better than dolemite pounders.

1) - Worker injuries. Too many workers would wreck their joints, and then be useless.

2) - Water. Just consider how much water you would need to bring out there if that many people are slaving away all day long in the heat.

Really? lol

They worked in groups of 3, not just one guy pounding, they had technic.... Its just manual labor...How did they build the railroad in America...brute force manual labor. Don't underestimate the power of our ancestors.

The railroads?

They would drive a big spike into the rock, and then inserted dynamite into the hole.

But if these guys are artisans, doing mostly the finishing work, they're going to be working at a slower pace (because you don't work artisans to death.) And there won't be as much of that in general.

The idea the Pharaoh is entrusting his reputation and legacy to slaves is as antiquated as the idea that the Great Pyramid itself was built by slaves. (We have proof the workers who did work on that were NOT slaves.)

I agree artisans doing the finish work and the brains behind it all, I think in many case not slaves just laborers doing their job they got paid for for the manual labor part. You really do not need to go back very far to see things built mainly on people's backs...

It's quite possible that slaves never touched these monuments at all, because allowing them to touch it would diminish its status (or be too great an honor for ones of their status.) Egyptians were real touchy about that stuff.

They might cook, or bring water to the artisans, perhaps.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
I'm not debating this point at all... My main point is there wasn't any advance civilizations outside of the normal flow of human advancement...i.e. no Atlantis with wonders we could only dream of...

I'm not debating at all, I don't debate, it's a discussion forum, I discuss - or that's the hope anyway. I understand your point but what I was trying to highlight is that we speak of "advanced" with little understanding of what advanced means or represents because of the degree of specialisation we have reached that removes us from the foundation of skills upon which our current technologies are built. A Gravettian would, upon adulthood, have acquired a vast range of skills and knowledge with which to survive and even thrive as an individual and as a group member. We, on the otherhand, are dependent on a range of specialists to meet our "needs" and don't necessarily possess the information that is required to survive. Are we as advanced as the Gravettians individually or only collectively - relatively speaking that is - know what I mean? For better or worse. Is what we consider "progress" progress and advancement or is it simply a co-dependency or a domestication?

originally posted by: Xtrozero
And a lifespan of like 30 to 35 years... No clue of your point here...You live today in a totally contain environmental chamber , my house is 68 year round, we never experience the elements unless we want to. We eat 1000 things from all over the world our ancestors never seen, 1000s of different dishes... You and I are talking across a great distance, sharing ideas...as example...Your point above is they learned how to survive...well good on them, I hope so.

I can see you have no clue, lol. Do you understand that there is a difference between quality and quantity? What I am trying to express is that our lives, what we have in the past and present considered progress isn't necessarily progress. We live in a technologically advanced age with instant communication which I, like you, value immensely but how connected are we to that technology? If we are not connected to our current technology it is very easy to become disconnected to how we came to be so technological as a species rather than as specialist individuals and that perhaps it is that which makes us susceptible to tales of lost civilisations seeking missing links when actually it's just that we're disassociated from the chain.

originally posted by: Xtrozero

Isn't that what I basically said...

You are debating about a very short period in our history and very focused on EU, how about Asia, India, Africa, Americas...
But here we are today in an advancement hunter/gathers could never get too, even remotely... If your argument is we were always better off as hunter/gathers you are putting too much romance into the subject of what life was really like during that time. It was a hard short life anyway you look at it 100x more harder than yours or mine is..... People today can be as healthy as they want to be, or unhealthy...its their choice...

Better is relative. As is hard-work. It takes a lot of effort to maintain a clean safe home, most of what necessitates that effort is removed by nomadism. We like our comfort and ease and seemingly don't consider the costs of having our food transported to us from all over the world. In meeting demand, local biodiversity is lost, ecosystems destroyed. How sustainable is our infestation of this planet at our current rate of "success" do you think? In our sedentary domestication we require variety and novelty to off-set our boredom and doing the same few things over and over again perhaps. Does the wild boar envy the penned in pig do you think? Or vice-versa? Do they even speak the same language? I am not attacking your, or rather our, way of life, it is what it is and we are here, what I am trying to say is that in isolating ourselves from our environment, by adopting sedentary habits and creating surplus we also created specialisms, and in creating specialisms we began to severe our connection with our own nature as part of a continuum of skills based learning as a whole or group, hence why some feel that there must have been some technologically advanced age that preceded our own, or a lost world, or whatever, when what we have is clear evidence of a step-by step process of discovery, experimentation and refinement from a foundation of the range of skills that are illustrated in the material culture of the Gravettian. Fibre technology, for example - where would we be without that eh? How much technology is built from their first steps?

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

You can get pretty close to that with wood fires, too. My parents live pretty far outside of town and so they are able to use wood for their heat. I like to go there in winter, because it is very cozy. Even nicer than my apartment in the city.

You can fine tune your body temperature, by sitting closer or further away from the fire. Sometimes when it is just starting, I sit on top of the fireplace to warm up. Or I'll stand very near it a few minutes to warm up a lot, and then move away and cool down over time.

Then you need to cut the wood haul it up, stack it and constantly keep the fire going. A little different than for me who does nothing at all to maintain 68. When I was in Korea in the 80s I rented a place off base and it was heated by coal. You would buy these coal bricks that were round in shape with holes and stack them on top of each other to get a continues burn as they pushed heat into pipes throughout the floor. It worked wasn't great, but better than nothing, and a hell of a easier process than raw wood.

But this is just one of a million things isn't it? I work 50 miles away, try that even 80 years ago...lol We get a lot of choices today that in the not too distant past we did not have.

I think you are over romanticizing the Medieval era. A few elites might have had it good. But life sucked for the peasants. There is a good reason why Renaissance paintings depict "beautiful" women as being fat.

Modern farm machinery has made it so, in our culture, only a tiny fraction of the work force is needed to sow and bring in the harvest for everyone.

The "Haber Process" allows us to use electricity to mass produce ammonia pellets from air and water. So our fields produce per acre, quite a bit more than any medieval farmer could have dreamt of getting out of their lands.

Well first the horse or ox greatly improved our ability to farm. Once again back off of EU...yep it sucked I agree, but there was a hell of a lot more people in the world that were living better than EU. I guess my point was that peasants worked pretty much the same hours as there is only so much sun light per day, so farming or hunting/gathering you are doing something throughout the day. Farming and domesticating animals allowed people to finally stay put for a very long time building civilizations and massing in large groups/cities and this allowed people to do different things other than just work to get food/shelter. A person could be a black smith their whole life and never miss a meal as example.. or paint, or be a scholar their whole life and never the need to provide the basics... Something totally impossible before farming.

The need to import the dolemite from another quarry is also a strong reason to doubt they would use it for the rough shaping. Not unless they truly could not think of any other way.

It was more than just that...Remember they were masters at their craft, so they knew exactly what worked best when and where. While you are not a master stoneworker, so no need to assume...lol Importing dolomite was small stuff...They did a lot of in/exporting.

I think part of my issue with this is it upsets me that people seem to be thinking the Egyptians were idiots.

You don't need to go full "Atlantis" to do better than dolemite pounders.

I don't think a single person ever thought that, or that about us 100k years ago either. We did put out that image about the Neanderthal, but today we know they were more advanced in some ways than we were back when we are both on the same timeline.

Then tell me how they did it. How did they cut pathways around a MASSIVE obelisk when the pathway was cut into solid granite? We pounded rocks for a very long time....

The dolomite pounders worked in teams of three. It was a sophisticated process, not just some guy pounding away.

But if these guys are artisans, doing mostly the finishing work, they're going to be working at a slower pace (because you don't work artisans to death.) And there won't be as much of that in general.

The idea the Pharaoh is entrusting his reputation and legacy to slaves is as antiquated as the idea that the Great Pyramid itself was built by slaves. (We have proof the workers who did work on that were NOT slaves.)

It's quite possible that slaves never touched these monuments at all, because allowing them to touch it would diminish its status (or be too great an honor for ones of their status.) Egyptians were real touchy about that stuff.

They might cook, or bring water to the artisans, perhaps.

True...

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout

I'm not debating at all, I don't debate, it's a discussion forum, I discuss - or that's the hope anyway. I understand your point but what I was trying to highlight is that we speak of "advanced" with little understanding of what advanced means or represents because of the degree of specialisation we have reached that removes us from the foundation of skills upon which our current technologies are built. A Gravettian would, upon adulthood, have acquired a vast range of skills and knowledge with which to survive and even thrive as an individual and as a group member. We, on the otherhand, are dependent on a range of specialists to meet our "needs" and don't necessarily possess the information that is required to survive. Are we as advanced as the Gravettians individually or only collectively - relatively speaking that is - know what I mean? For better or worse. Is what we consider "progress" progress and advancement or is it simply a co-dependency or a domestication?

It depends on the situation doesn't it. I think I could learn Gravettian skills much faster than one could learn mine. Co-dependency has allowed us to specialize which has greatly push us on a extreme advancement path. Does this make us weaker...as I said it depends on the situation.

I understand your view but I do not see your point. I agree they were skilled in survival which most in the modern world do not need those skills anymore, but there are still millions on the planet that still do the survival thing just fine.
I'm sure they were a jack of all trades, we were more like that 140+ years ago too, but a lot more advance in our methods. I think you are mixing up "advance" with "skilled". Their methods were not advanced, but they were highly skilled in what they did.

I can see you have no clue, lol. Do you understand that there is a difference between quality and quantity? What I am trying to express is that our lives, what we have in the past and present considered progress isn't necessarily progress. We live in a technologically advanced age with instant communication which I, like you, value immensely but how connected are we to that technology? If we are not connected to our current technology it is very easy to become disconnected to how we came to be so technological as a species rather than as specialist individuals and that perhaps it is that which makes us susceptible to tales of lost civilisations seeking missing links when actually it's just that we're disassociated from the chain.

Here is quality for you... You can be anything you want... You can be that hunter that lives in the wilds using simple tools if that is what you want, or be an airline pilot...your choice...how is that for quality. Their choice was just one...survival, and I don't call that quality...

Yes we can lose it and drop back to some level... That is a real concern, but we are 7+ billion, and even if 6 billion died tomorrow we would still have more humans on the planet than 99% of our history at any given time. We also have millions that still live a rather primitive life and if they lost modern tech they would hardly know it. America would be screwed, but would many parts of south America also be screwed, as example? I think it would be short lived as in 100 years we would be right back at it. Think of how far we have come in the last 200 or 300 years. A mass event 300 years ago would hardily effect anyone.

Better is relative. As is hard-work. It takes a lot of effort to maintain a clean safe home, most of what necessitates that effort is removed by nomadism. We like our comfort and ease and seemingly don't consider the costs of having our food transported to us from all over the world. In meeting demand, local biodiversity is lost, ecosystems destroyed.

Even the American Indian was not kind to the environment.

How sustainable is our infestation of this planet at our current rate of "success" do you think? In our sedentary domestication we require variety and novelty to off-set our boredom and doing the same few things over and over again perhaps. Does the wild boar envy the penned in pig do you think?

Most likely very sustainable, just different... I do not think tanning hides in the evening would be entertaining. I don't think they had much entertaining as they spent most of their waking hours surviving one way or another. Do you fill penned? I feel freed to do anything I want...

originally posted by: Xtrozero

Well first the horse or ox greatly improved our ability to farm. Once again back off of EU...yep it sucked I agree, but there was a hell of a lot more people in the world that were living better than EU. I guess my point was that peasants worked pretty much the same hours as there is only so much sun light per day, so farming or hunting/gathering you are doing something throughout the day.

Just like when comparing EU to other areas, it depends where you are looking at.

Native Americans on the plains basically just waited for a herd to come by. They were really busy at that moment, and for a week or two afterward as they butchered their kills. But that lifestyle leaves a lot of downtime.

Of course, buffalo might be considered megafauna.

Hunter/gatherers of the old world had to hunt the worst terrains, because by the time history started being recorded, most of them had already been pushed out of the best lands by agriculturalists.

Farming and domesticating animals allowed people to finally stay put for a very long time building civilizations and massing in large groups/cities and this allowed people to do different things other than just work to get food/shelter. A person could be a black smith their whole life and never miss a meal as example.. or paint, or be a scholar their whole life and never the need to provide the basics... Something totally impossible before farming.

This is where I'm kind of going down my own custom rabbit hole.

The 5 ton blocks in many megalithic structures, together with the tendency to interlock the blocks, suggests to me that they were meant to keep a specific type of enemy out. Enemies whose own bodies weighed over 5 tons, and would be able to push down a wall that was built of any smaller materials (or non interlocked materials.)


If you were a hunter in that era, you could stand on top of that wall with some spears, and kill approaching mammoths from relative safety.

Why would they approach?

These are big animals. They strip the land completely bare everywhere they go. If they avoid human settlements and graze everywhere else, then sooner or later the territory around the human settlement is going to be the last place with any good grazing.

I think part of my issue with this is it upsets me that people seem to be thinking the Egyptians were idiots.

You don't need to go full "Atlantis" to do better than dolemite pounders.

I don't think a single person ever thought that, or that about us 100k years ago either. We did put out that image about the Neanderthal, but today we know they were more advanced in some ways than we were back when we are both on the same timeline.

Then tell me how they did it. How did they cut pathways around a MASSIVE obelisk when the pathway was cut into solid granite? We pounded rocks for a very long time....

The dolomite pounders worked in teams of three. It was a sophisticated process, not just some guy pounding away.

If you use a method that is too labor intensive, and you are using artisans, then the time required to finish the project is going to get drawn out by an appropriate number of years.

No matter how many workers a site has, only so many can fit around the obelisk itself. That determines the maximum number that can possibly work on it at the same time.

If I have 20,000 workers, but only 100 can physically stand in the trench area around the obelisk, then only 100 of those workers can actually be pounding.

There is no evidence that the Ancient Egyptians were comfortable stretching out a project over multiple generations of ruler. And rulers could not be confident about how long they would live.


Therefore, it follows they must have had a more elegant method for doing the rough work. I don't feel any need to take this accomplishment away from the Ancient Egyptians, because I can't think of any reason an earlier precursor culture would have cared about making obelisks.

I just don't believe dolemite pounders are the whole story.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

Native Americans on the plains basically just waited for a herd to come by. They were really busy at that moment, and for a week or two afterward as they butchered their kills. But that lifestyle leaves a lot of downtime.

Of course, buffalo might be considered megafauna.

I can't say they lived a healthy lifestyle, but when your life span is rather short I guess it doesn't matter. Many Indians today are fat and that is due to their ancestors living a very harsh existence and the only ones that could survive periods of low food were people with the best ability to store fat...Everyone else died, so today they have a ton of food and the thing that allowed them to live makes them fat.

BTW with all that free time what did they do? They sure didn't advance very far in 12,000 years... It wasn't until farming in South America brought civilizations to higher levels. BTW American Indians did farm some... So farming wasn't some evil thing invented in one place that spread like a virus, it was a nature process for all of mankind

Hunter/gatherers of the old world had to hunt the worst terrains, because by the time history started being recorded, most of them had already been pushed out of the best lands by agriculturalists.

Environments changed too, such as North Africa...

This is where I'm kind of going down my own custom rabbit hole.

The 5 ton blocks in many megalithic structures, together with the tendency to interlock the blocks, suggests to me that they were meant to keep a specific type of enemy out. Enemies whose own bodies weighed over 5 tons, and would be able to push down a wall that was built of any smaller materials (or non interlocked materials.)


If you were a hunter in that era, you could stand on top of that wall with some spears, and kill approaching mammoths from relative safety.

Why would they approach?

These are big animals. They strip the land completely bare everywhere they go. If they avoid human settlements and graze everywhere else, then sooner or later the territory around the human settlement is going to be the last place with any good grazing.

The problem is that mammoths were well on their way out long before man started to build massive structures with stone. Something like Machu Picchu was around the 1400s, so not actually that too far in our past.

If you use a method that is too labor intensive, and you are using artisans, then the time required to finish the project is going to get drawn out by an appropriate number of years.

No matter how many workers a site has, only so many can fit around the obelisk itself. That determines the maximum number that can possibly work on it at the same time.

If I have 20,000 workers, but only 100 can physically stand in the trench area around the obelisk, then only 100 of those workers can actually be pounding.

There is no evidence that the Ancient Egyptians were comfortable stretching out a project over multiple generations of ruler. And rulers could not be confident about how long they would live.

But you do not know how long it takes... They had time and bodies to do it. If you could only pound a 1/4 inch a day it would take you 280 days or so to get to 6 feet, 1/2 inch would be 140 days...

So would 5 years be too long? I'm sure it was well under that from start to finish with a obelisk.

Therefore, it follows they must have had a more elegant method for doing the rough work. I don't feel any need to take this accomplishment away from the Ancient Egyptians, because I can't think of any reason an earlier precursor culture would have cared about making obelisks.

I just don't believe dolemite pounders are the whole story.

Any yet there are 100s and 100s of used ones at these sites...lol

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

Native Americans on the plains basically just waited for a herd to come by. They were really busy at that moment, and for a week or two afterward as they butchered their kills. But that lifestyle leaves a lot of downtime.

Of course, buffalo might be considered megafauna.

I can't say they lived a healthy lifestyle, but when your life span is rather short I guess it doesn't matter. Many Indians today are fat and that is due to their ancestors living a very harsh existence and the only ones that could survive periods of low food were people with the best ability to store fat...Everyone else died, so today they have a ton of food and the thing that allowed them to live makes them fat.

BTW with all that free time what did they do? They sure didn't advance very far in 12,000 years... It wasn't until farming in South America brought civilizations to higher levels. BTW American Indians did farm some... So farming wasn't some evil thing invented in one place that spread like a virus, it was a nature process for all of mankind

Getting fat is just as much a sign of poor nutrition as good nutrition. If their ancestors were eating buffalo meat, and now they're eating candy, then they probably have a high rate of diabetes too.

This is where I'm kind of going down my own custom rabbit hole.

The 5 ton blocks in many megalithic structures, together with the tendency to interlock the blocks, suggests to me that they were meant to keep a specific type of enemy out. Enemies whose own bodies weighed over 5 tons, and would be able to push down a wall that was built of any smaller materials (or non interlocked materials.)


If you were a hunter in that era, you could stand on top of that wall with some spears, and kill approaching mammoths from relative safety.

Why would they approach?

These are big animals. They strip the land completely bare everywhere they go. If they avoid human settlements and graze everywhere else, then sooner or later the territory around the human settlement is going to be the last place with any good grazing.

The problem is that mammoths were well on their way out long before man started to build massive structures with stone. Something like Machu Picchu was around the 1400s, so not actually that too far in our past.

Only a small fraction of the structure of Macchu Picchu is megalithic construction.

And there is no reason to insist that every part of a site has to have been built entirely at the same time. Megalithic construction last a very long time. Just waiting, like a beacon, for someone to move in and settle there.

On the Old World continents, the Greeks called that kind of construction "Cyclopean". The trunk socket on an elephant skull can easily be mistaken for a big eye socket.

Suggests to me that ancient Greeks might have been finding elephant skulls near these walls.

If you use a method that is too labor intensive, and you are using artisans, then the time required to finish the project is going to get drawn out by an appropriate number of years.

No matter how many workers a site has, only so many can fit around the obelisk itself. That determines the maximum number that can possibly work on it at the same time.

If I have 20,000 workers, but only 100 can physically stand in the trench area around the obelisk, then only 100 of those workers can actually be pounding.

There is no evidence that the Ancient Egyptians were comfortable stretching out a project over multiple generations of ruler. And rulers could not be confident about how long they would live.

But you do not know how long it takes... They had time and bodies to do it. If you could only pound a 1/4 inch a day it would take you 280 days or so to get to 6 feet, 1/2 inch would be 140 days...

So would 5 years be too long? I'm sure it was well under that from start to finish with a obelisk.

The first ruler to do it also wouldn't know how long it takes.

However, interestingly, there is evidence emerging that they first weakened the rock with fire.

per-storemyr.net...

Pounders + fire would work. Then you're not pounding endlessly for hours to wear an inch away. You might get several feet in one day.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

Only a small fraction of the structure of Macchu Picchu is megalithic construction.

Here you wander off into lala land with a baseless claim that is required to support your other baseless claim. Apparently you decided to post this without thoroughly researching how it is we we know how old Machu Picchu actually is.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelousOn the Old World continents, the Greeks called that kind of construction "Cyclopean". The trunk socket on an elephant skull can easily be mistaken for a big eye socket.

They also said the Cyclops forged Zeus' thunderbolts. You seeing mammoths doing that?
Dependency on mythology to support your baseless claim. So there's a third baseless claim manufactured solely to support your first baseless claim.

Harte

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

Pounders + fire would work. Then you're not pounding endlessly for hours to wear an inch away. You might get several feet in one day.

But we don't see any ash if that was the case. As I said it wasn't just some guy on his knees pounding. They had a sophisticated method using 3 people per team.