…and the obligatory ignorance-fighting:
Contrary to some popular depictions, the pyramid builders were not slaves or foreigners.
…and the obligatory ignorance-fighting:
Contrary to some popular depictions, the pyramid builders were not slaves or foreigners.
Ever try to knap a flint? It ain’t as easy as all that Clan of the Cave Bear shit would have it seem. I imagine the best way to learn is to learn at the knee of another Stone Age adult.
I read an article in Scientific American a few years ago that claimed that they had figured out how to do make Damascus steel. Of course, no one can be sure that they are using the same technique that the blacksmiths of India and the Middle East used, but I gather that it is highly plausible that they duplicated the technique.
Also, (and I hope more relevant to the OP) the article went on to describe why the technique was lost. IIRC, the smiths may have used a particular ore that lent itself nicely to making the steel. As the ore was played out and the steel could no longer be reproduced, smiths no longer bothered to pass on the technique to their apprentices and so it died out. Other “lost” technologies may have suffered a similar fate.
FWIW,
Rob
A more modern example would be the Polychrome Houses of Silver Spring, MD. Beautiful and inexpensively-made, these mosaic-like cottages just off Rt. 29 were part of an unsuccessful bid to get in on the wartime housing boom in the Washington suburbs. The designer died a few years later and his notes were destroyed in a subsequent office fire. Some of these lovely homes are falling into disrepair and no modern contractor can duplicate the old formula to patch up the facades.
I’m sure that if enough money and effort were thrown into it, someone would be able to duplicate the stuff, but with fewer than ten Polychrome houses known to exist (five of them on contiguous lots), the drive to save them just doesn’t exist. It’s a pity. These houses should be an historical site, but instead they’re just a local curiosity.
Ha! No, but I can imagine! The first time I tried to cook a rabbit on a spit, my upright supports kept burning down. Damn rabbit kept falling into the coals. I finally figured out that if I soaked green wood in the river for an hour before cooking and kept dribbling water on it during cooking, it would stay wet enough to allow the rabbit to cook without burning away itself. Made an assload of steam, though. Is that the exact technique used in the past? Well, maybe, by some people (probably not by desert-dwellers). But it took me several days to “rediscover” it for myself, because my mother and my grandmother never cooked a rabbit on a fire!
And how about Stradivarius violins? We can make fiddles with the exact dimensions, but we have no way of re-creating the specific woods from trees available at that time and location.
I seem to recall this phrase (or similar) being used in books like Chariots of the Gods? when discussing the Easter Island statues, giant lines on the plains of Nazca, tiny holes bored in quartz beads, etc. I read it when I was 11, so I assume that at least some of these phenomena have been explained by now.
Nova (PBS)'s explanation to all of Von Daniken’s claims amounted to “He was too easily impressed.” I’d like to be more specific, but this was thirty years ago.
Oh–and apropos of mystical things they used to do that might have been made by alienses, here’s Homer Simpson with the Cerne Abbas Giant. BBC thinks its SFW but YMMV. The giant has “a club measuring 120 feet.” Yes… A club.
Oh wait, I just remembered one of Nova’s examples: “Plains of Nazca,” you say? Impossibly large lines the size of airport runways? They showed one of the same lines VonDaniken included photos of, but showed a man walking along it so you’d see it in accurate scale. It was tiny!
Here’s useful for scale.
Except perhaps the part about quenching the steel in the body of a slave.
The *result * can be and has been duplicated, though. I can’t think of anything we simply can’t do anymore, and much more easily than the oldtimers did, even if we wouldn’t go about it the same way.
The claim about techniques not being duplicated is often associated with the precision masonry work done on huge, solid pieces of stone, such as granite or limestone. You will often see someone referring to the precision with which columns or pyramids were built. The most interesting part – once one gets past the shear size – is the shear precision of the joints.
It’s anecdotal evidence, but the ‘can’t be duplicated’ remarks are often associated with the precision masonry work. Just my $.02.
square off massive stone blocks? In the Old Kingdom, all they had were copper chisels-not even bronze! Seems to ne that copper tools were pretty soft-were the continually re-sharpening their tools?
I once read that the egyptian copper contained quite a bit of arsnic-which combined with work hardening, would have made teir chisels hard enough (to shape limestone). But how did they work with granite?
I saw something on the temples of Angkor Wat where they demonstrated how the stones were fit. IIRC the temples are made of sandstone. Blocks were put on top of another block and ‘sanded’ down to a perfect fit.
They *did * have strings they could stretch taut to find the high spots, and stretch between corners to look for squareness.
I understand there’s some evidence of the tool-sharpening facilities on-site, likely a full-time job.
I don’t think they had any.
I grew up walking distance from these houses, and I’d never heard of them until today. I’ll have to check them out when I go to visit my folks this spring…
Your link says he patented the process, so I doubt that the process was lost. As far as the stripping the concrete to expose the aggregate, that is a fairly standard process for making fancy sidewalks and walk ways. My father and I did that to the walkway to our house when we remodeled.
I’m not seeing what can’t be duplicated today in those houses.
Okay, I have to say that its stupid to have those pictures in black and white.
I’m relying on my memory (dangerous!)…
It wasn’t until about 20 years ago when scientists investigated the great stringed instruments of Cremona (Amati, Guarnari, Stradavarius) in enough detail to break some of their secrets. Up to that point it was acknowledged that modern string instrument makers could not come close to producing an instrument that matched the ones of old Cremona.
The “secrets” seem to lie in the following areas: Wood, Varnish and structure.
A theory about the wood is quite interesting: Europe had been in a mini ice age, causing slow growth of the trees which produced denser than normal wood.
The varnish I can’t remember but the structure was also fascinating: the shape, size and thickness of the various sections of sound board, back and “f-holes” were no accident: all played an acoustic role in contributing to a sonorous instrument that could project strongly and beautifully.