As for seal-clubbing, I wish this was a lost art.
Rumour has it that it’s a fucking Seal-Clubathon out in the Faroe Islands.
I hope this can be proven to be baseless though.
I thought my ‘attack’ on Heyerdahl was relatively low key and implicit; without saying much I seem to have implied a lot.
Wel, to be a little more explicit, none of Heyerdahl’s theories on transoceanic migration have really panned out; he was wrong about Kontiki, and he was wrong about Ra.
However he was an admirable bloke, and his reconstruction of the construction and movement of the Easter Island Statues was a commendable piece of work;
these days there are similar efforts at reconstruction all over the world demonstrating that all these lost arts were within the range of human endeavour;
but they really fall into the realm of entertainment, as there is little proof that these reconstructions were accurate…
Even the Heyerdahl, Skjølsvold and Pavel reconstruction on Easter Island is unreliable, as they supposed cultural transmission of the techniques over a period of several centuries, during which time nobody ever put the techniques into practice.
It is equally possible that everybody concerned, Europeans and islanders alike, were making it up as they went along.
Regarding Stradivarius, there is no reason to believe that the best violins made now are any “worse” (this itself being a subjective value judgement), although there may be something in the ageing process which affects tone and playability.
Here is a good article (by my PhD external examiner, by the way!).
That stuff on the Discovery Channel was not recently discovered either - Carleen Hutchins was way more advanced than this 20 years ago.
As for “Sealclubbing”, I think you may be referring to my native Liverpool’s Half Man Half Biscuit - the song was on their first album, “Back in the DHSS”.
About Sword combat (historical fencing) :
This is partly a lost art. There are indeed people (myself included) who study historical fencing and medieval european martial arts.
We use those manuscripts that are still aorund today, which are, sadly, few and far between. When you add some common sense and personal experience to th mix you end up with a deadly and functional martial art style based on medieval techniques.
So, yes PROPER fighting technique involving sword, longsword, two-handed swords, shield, armor, and pole arm is still practised today by a small number of historical fencers.
About Sword forging techniques:
Actually today’s hand crafted swords are little better than those masterfully crafted by our ancestors.
The techniques we use today may not be exactly the same as used during those times, but they are close. Which goes to show that those ancients had it right 
If you’re talking about comparing “hand forged today versus hand-forged in the past”, and you are talking about starting with the same purity of iron, then I would not argue with you at all. In fact, I might say with all things equal, since there is not the skill base and common lineage of practice, that past hand-forging might in fact yield a better weapon if all things were equal.
What I was comparing was “hand forged in the past with the materials available” versus “machined in the present with the best materials available”. So it’s not a fair comparison.
You’re assuming that these were ‘precise work of placement’. But, as the statistical studies by Peter Furness in the 1960s and by Robert Forrest in the 1980s showed, these are just what one would expect from randomly distributed sites. This means that all the apparent alignments are almost certainly just coincidences.
There is nothing at all mysterious about this and the effect is really very low-tech.
Maybe it would help if I rephrased the question thusly:
Is there anything that past civilizations could do that we cannot do just as well (if not better)?
Barry
We may not know with absolute certainty, but these guys seem to have it figured out pretty well.
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeven-9809.html
Looks like it wasn’t as much of an art as it was an iron supply from a particular region.
**
This is hardly a mystery. Surveying techniques and instruments have been around for a long time–IIRC, they’ve found ancient Egyptian surveying instruments. Sometimes those instruments were as simple as a rope and a stick, and I’m sure the calculations must have been a bear in Roman numerals, but it’s not like the basic surveying to lay out those temples and cathedrals hadn’t existed for a long time. More sophisticated instruments were available in the 18th century, but to say it’s a mystery anyone did anything without them is like saying it’s a mystery people did any calculations before computers, or made popcorn without microwaves.
People made popcorn without microwaves???
I want to get back to the Heyerdahl thing. I don’t think that eburacum45 said anything out of line about Heyerdahl. Heyerdahl said that Easter Island was colonized by Peruvians moving west, and not by Pacific Islanders moving east. All he did was prove that, with the technology they had, the trip could have been made. He never proved that it was made. So what? Some researchers showed that the Nazca could have flown balloons with the materials they had at hand. We could probably colonize Mars with what we have at hand.
I would still like to see a cite for Heyerdahls’ method of moving the Moai.
I might agree with you if not for the the fact that current machine mass-produced swords are 100% garbage.
I would say however, that if a group of experienced swordsmiths and scientists got together to build a machine run factory to specifically make high quality swords (probably with a lot of human interaction as well) then yes, we’d probably be able to make them as good as the ancients if not a little better/cheaper.
Medieval swordsmiths were pretty much already stretching the material to it’s limits. A quality sword could be bent 90 degrees! and snap back to it’s true shape. It could also retain a mean, sharp edge and weighed less than 2 lbs. I’m not up on current metallurgical techniques, but I’d think we’d be hard pressed to do any better now.
I might agree with you if not for the the fact that current machine mass-produced swords are 100% garbage.
I would say however, that if a group of experienced swordsmiths and scientists got together to build a machine run factory to specifically make high quality swords (probably with a lot of human interaction as well) then yes, we’d probably be able to make them as good as the ancients if not a little better/cheaper.
Medieval swordsmiths were pretty much already stretching the material to it’s limits. A quality sword could be bent 90 degrees! and snap back to it’s true shape. It could also retain a mean, sharp edge and weighed less than 2 lbs. I’m not up on current metallurgical techniques, but I’d think we’d be hard pressed to do any better now.
The techniques the ancients used to survey and lay out their construction are still being used today. Anyone who makes crop circles uses the methods of knotted ropes and sticks. You can survey things with amazing accuracy using nothing more, even at night with only a few people in a few hours.
As for moving large stones, we may not know the exact techniques each civilization used to move their particular heavy stones, but there are several methods that could have been used. Just take some ropes, some rollers, and several hundred workers and you can move just about any rock anywhere you want. The exact technique used in a particular case may be unknown, but that doesn’t mean the technique that was used is a “lost art”.
Oh, and Kinthalis? One thing I’ve learned in my tenure here at the SDMB is never argue with Una/Anthracite over matters metallurgical, geological, or mechanical. You might be correct when talking about fantasy reproduction swords sold at cons. But our knowledge of metallurgy has advanced over the ancients as much as chemistry has advanced over alchemy. If a group of experts got together they could build swords that would cut the finest ancient katanas and damascus steel rapiers to pieces, just like the tennis raquets, running shoes, and a thousand other items made with modern materials and design would put the finest crafted antique items to shame.
And to show that such cultural blindness isn’t confined to our own, modern times–one of my personal “bonehead moments”–come on, we all have them–was back in college. It was a chilly autumn evening, and my roommate commented that it would be a perfect night to have some popcorn. I said, “Yeah, too bad we don’t have a popcorn popper.” She just looked at me, until I realized how stupid that was. In my defense, my parents had always used an electric popper, and I had no idea how to make it on a stove, though I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that it was possible.
I found a brief survey (heh!) of the history of surveying. It looks nearly identical to the first pages of the surveying text I borrowed from my brother-in-law to work through when I got a job on a field crew, including the nifty illustrations of the Egyptian and Roman levels and the diagram showing how Eratosthenes calculated the diameter of the Earth with a wooden rod more than 2000 years ago.
http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/area/maths/compass/html/surveying/suhis.html
We have no need to spend 10-15 years learning those skills because we have M16s/AK47s/whatever…
The only comparable skill these days is Fencing, a sport… although Boris Onischenko seemed to take it more seriously than most. It hasn’t been a matter of life and death for centuries.
Seal Clubbing: Half Man Half Biscuit.
I agree with you, but then again I don’t think that Damascus swords were necessarily mass produced or cost as proportionately as cheaply as modern ones do.
What I’m talking about, to clarify further, is what can result from a good Engineer/machinist/craftsman who gets a great piece of stock metal and works with it. Using modern tools and equipment, modern understanding of heat treatment and carburizing/nitriding, magnetic fluxing to check for cracks and impurities, etc.
Medieval swords? Maybe one in 1,000 might be that good. IIRC the sword of an average footsoldier would have been more of a step up from iron, rather than a fantastic weapon. I think that we must look to much later than the Middle Ages for more consistent sword quality.
As a note from today, my light rapier from Angel Sword can be bent at 90 degrees or more, and snaps back to its true shape. It also weighs less than 2 pounds. I can’t speak for its edge, as I’ve not been hacking at anyone lately.
It was also made from a leaf spring from a truck. It’s a cheaply-made sword.
I’ll bet if I took a piece of 440C stock, fluxed it to look for problems, watched the metal temperatures carefully during CNC milling, cut and micropolished it, I would have a sword that while not flexible, would likely be many times stronger and tougher than a Damascus sword. I’m not exactly sure what the benefit of flexibility is so long as the toughness (as Engineers mean, “resistance to crack formation and propagation”, speaking off the cuff here) is there. And 440C has a very high toughness as martensitic stainless steels go. In fact, I would think that with all things equal, a more flexible weapon would result in less efficient transfer of energy, but I could be sadly mistaken.
Would my sword be harder? Maybe not, as surface hardening does not lend itself to SS, but I suppose I could vapour deposit titanium nitride on it and possibly cut clean through a Damascus sword. Unlike some stainless steels 440C also does take to heat treatment well, which is one reason it makes good knives. I know you can get a Rockwell hardness of close to 60 with heat treatment alone, so maybe that plus nitriding would really be good.
[aside]I sure wish I has a Bridgeport mill. Oh how I wish I did. I could set up the “Women of Steel Sword Company” in my garage…[/aside]
The ancient smiths, some of them at least, did incredible things with the technology and materials available. But my belief is that we can certainly make steels now that far exceed what any Damascus steel sword could do. This may require layering and folding of the metal in the same manner as a Damascus sword to have the same characteristics, though. That laminated effective structure sure is nice to have, and labour intensive.
The main problem in discussing this is that (generally) there are not ancient swords available for performance testing against good modern ones - and even if there were, the aging/corrosion processes would introduce some uncertainty into the results. Thus, it’s very difficult to dispell the notion that somehow ancient smiths working with materials of widely ranging purity and composition, inconsistent heat treatment, and natural variation in manufacture and shaping (regardless of how good they are, no two swords will be manufactured in the same way) were able to make fantastic swords that could excel in all properties and qualities needed. Just like it’s impossible to “prove” that Eastern warriors were not superhuman fighters ala Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - none of them are alive to fight against.
Eep! I do appreciate the kind words and praise, but I hope no one ever feels like they cannot argue with me on anything (except coal ). Over 7000+ posts I certainly have said things that are wrong, mis-typed things, and based assumptions on unreliable sources before. I’m certainly not always right about anything (except coal), and I hope that Kinthalis will respectfully understand that I really only argue because I believe what I am saying based on knowledge and experience and research to be true - but I may be incorrect on one, some, or even all points. And if so, I hope s/he will explain and discuss with me so I can understand their position and learn something myself.
In addition, this subject is a hard one to debate with some accuracy because equivalent performance testing of Damascus swords and modern BAT (best available technology) weapons is not really possible. So there is a lot of opinion at play in what I just posted above.
Here’s one of his papers:
The “Walking” Moai of Easter Island By Thor Heyerdahl, Arne Skjølsvold and Pavel Pavel.
Whoops, bad link. Here ya go:
The “Walking” Moai of Easter Island By Thor Heyerdahl, Arne Skjølsvold and Pavel Pavel.