People are always trying to revive ancient construction styles. Why does the Capitol look like is was built by the Romans? Why does Westminster look like a Gothic cathedral? Centuries from now, we’ll go through recurring cycles of Post-Modernist Revival, with countless hotels trying to copy the Bilbao Guggenheim. It’s just the way things work.
And 1,000 years from now, they’ll wonder the exact same thing about Vegas. What brought the ancients to build these huge edifices in the middle of the desert? Would could they possibly have wanted?
There have been a number of blind tests: even highly trained classical violinists can’t actually hear a difference between a genuine Strad and a good modern repro.
Are we capable of doing stained glass up to Chartres level? I vaguely recall hearing a long time ago that attempts to match such stained glass had failed.
More recently, I very much doubt that engineering marvels like the Hoover Dam, Golden Gate Bridge, Holland Tunnel, could be built today.
Not because the engineering talent doesn’t exist…its because the necessary permitting, environmental impact statements, etc. wold take decades to complete. And you would always have some nutbag group protesting it, even after all the hurdles had been cleared.
Look what happens when you try to reduce carbon footprints (by building a nuclear power plant)-the protest groups come out of the woodwork-and tie you up in court for years.
I don’t know, nutbag isn’t a political party … they have them in every party. I don’t know if you noticed, but the Powers That Be in the US have kept route 6 in CT from being widened into 4 lane blacktop because it asses through an area that was clearcut for a couple hundred years, until WW2 on the grounds it is a wetland, when there isn’t anything that is primal forest at all. So that little area has the consideration for being something like one of the most deadly stretches of road in the US [or at least it used to be, with something like 1 death per mile per year or something like that. Most ‘eco fanatics’ have a tenuous grasp of actual ecology at best. Something may be ‘green’ but it isn’t actually the best choice of action in general.
A political jab doesn’t have to be against a specific political party. The use of loaded terms like “nutbag” and “eco fanatics” is inappropriate for GQ, and doesn’t contribute to the discussion here, and in addition is off topic from the OP.
In any case, if you have a disagreement about moderating actions, those should be taken to ATMB. I am making this a moderator note rather than a warning, but take any further discussion to an appropriate forum.
If we speak about something made a specific and unique substance, then obviously yes these are irreplaceable artifacts. By the very definition of the words “specific and unique” these are one of a kind artifacts.
Even if we could replicate the very quantum particles that make up the time and space that define them, they would still be bound to the moment and circumstances of their creation. The destination does not define the path by which it was found, nor can we predict the past and future path of any person we meet. Uncertainty and randomness underpin all deep observations. So, when we speak of ‘things modern Humanity can not build that their ancestors could’ then I call bollocks to the whole thing.
We speak about the Khufu’s Pyramid as if it is colossal.
It was, for its time.
But, rising from its crippled slumber, England erected the spire of Lincoln Cathedral in circa 1300 CE.
And now, it is dwarfed by many high-rise slum projects in the 3rd World.
I propose that the most difficult thing to replicate would be the Apollo Project.
Start from virtual scratch and get a 3 man team to Luna AND BACK.
In less than ten years.
Would be quite difficult to even come close.
But, a new project to get a team to and from Luna?
That would take 3 maybe 4 years, if we had the money.
Personally, I’d say that whatever emotions went into the building of the pyramids, they’re gone now. My perspective is that any emotions were in the people not the building.
Or are you saying there’s some objective difference resulting from the builders’ emotions? That you can somehow “read” a building and tell what the people who built it were feeling?
Isn’t cedar a fairly soft wood? And I don’t really think of wood in most egyptian structures. I seem to remember most monumental structures [temples mainly] as having stone beams over a fairly small area, and open atriums more than vast expanses of rooved over areas.
Really, most bronze age structures were more lots of small cells rather than vast open palaces. If you take a look at Mohenjo Daro, Minos or even Diocletians Palace in Croatia they are all made up of reasonably small rooms. [OK Diocletian’s Palace is not bronze age, it is post Imperial Rome … bite me =) ] A fairly large room might be on the order of 20 meters/yards by 8 or 9 meters/yards, with internal pillars supporting the span. You also frequently do not have passageways, you move room to room, and in warmer and drier areas you do much living in peristyles [covered areas surrounding an open atrium] and under fabric awnings [the coliseum is now considered to have had a system of masts, spars and canvas creating a roofing system, operated by sailors. Fascinating.] And it also holds if you move to the American southwest, I am seriously fond of Chaco Canyon - such orderly living spaces. [but then again the desert is not forgiving of forgetfulness.] Pinon pine is a scrub, and really doesn’t get tall and straight like many more temperate zone trees.
Artistry has little to do with reproducing it, only in the initial construction. There might not be anyone alive capable of recreating the exact carvings by hand, but with 3D scanning and other forms of modeling that’s not important. In 1999 Stanford University, for example, did 3D modelling of several of Michelangelo’s statues, including David. They were accurate to .25 millimeters. That’s good enough to recreate the exact chisel marks. We’ve only gotten better since then.
At our current technology levels there’s no structure or piece of art that can’t be perfectly recreated given enough time.
There’s still some friendly disagreement about how well we understand how Damascus steel was made, but we can make pretty good approximations of it. It’s also a matter of conjecture as to what Greek fire really was, but we can make napalm today.
I’ve always thought the theory that the pyramids were made of concrete was credible, or at least more credible than the idea that massive blocks were fitted together perfectly. Cement was well within the technology available at the time.
For having massive stone blocks fitted together perfectly, the Egyptian pyramids have nothing on the stone work of pre-Columbian Andean masons (Inca, et al). They certainly didn’t use poured anything, and they achieved earthquake-resistant, interlocking, irregular blocks far bigger than seems possible. They probably used a method of sanding similar to what the Greeks used to flatten blocks for their collumns, and the irregular shapes made mortar unnecessary.
Could we replicate this stonework? Yeah, after some trail and error and a whole lot of pain in the ass.
That’s a decent point. It’s pretty hard (i.e. not impossible, but expensive) to build a replica of a typical 18th century New England barn, just because you need big timbers and wide boards and big trees are now pretty rare. There’s plenty for any single reproduction, but if we tried to build, say, a fleet of 1800s ships of the line, getting the timber would be an undertaking. Sure, we could grow more, but that might take a couple hundred years…
That story and variants of it (often it’s the architects who are blinded) have been told about enough architectural marvels to make it suspect.
Even if a ruler did kill everyone who was involved in building some architectural masterpiece, the architectural masterpiece itself would be there as a proof that it could be done, and you could get some relevant details by examining it. It seems the only way to really ensure that it could never be reproduced would be to kill everyone involved in creating it, destroy any plans that were used in the building, and raze the architectural marvel. The things we can’t reproduce today are things that aren’t around any more, so we’re not sure what they were really like.
So use sequoias, or Pyrenees pines, or… The masts and beams of the Spanish school ship Juan Sebastián Elcano are all single-cut from Pps (no joints anywhere).
Why is that an obstacle? Whenever people trot out this issue, the proponents of the “amazing past knowledge” claims conveniently overlook the time the ancients spent in obtaining their knowledge. Yes, it was “only” 150 years between the first step-pyramids and the Great Pyramid. (I put “only” in quotes because I’ve seen it used that way.) Ancient civilizations may not have progressed technologically as fast as we have overall, but pyramid building in Egypt was a special case. As a monument to their living god, it was the single most important technology they had. They studied it constantly and learned new and better techniques all the time.
We might be a bit rusty in pyramid-building techniques because we haven’t needed them for a bit. So to be fair, why not give us 150 years to study the problem and gradually build up our knowledge and expertise again? You know the answer. Because we **would **be able to. And that would undermine the claims because obviously we should know how to do things today right now that nobody has needed to know for centuries.
That’s a ridiculous argument. Once you lay it out that way, its force disappears. We can celebrate the marvelous achievements of the past while at the same time acknowledging that we can out-do them. Not to mention that people in the past would be stunned by the thought that we couldn’t do what they did. Only certain people in the present have that odd bit of stupidity.
