Floored by a 7-Eleven. Bill Whittle thinks big!
Did someone cut out eyeholes in Cheops’s bandages?
Did someone transplant Bill Whittle’s brain into Cheops’s skull, seeing as Cheops’s brains were removed through his nose?
Should someone transplant Bill Whittle’s brain into Cheops’s skull?
Four out of five doctors say “Yes!” Even Republican doctors.
And so do I.
Name one. And, you know, explain how their understanding is greater than ours.
The OP’s premise (extrapolated to ancient societies in general) is very common among alt health loons.
Ancient/primitive people lived longer/healthier lives because they had magickal herbs/lifestyles/foods/chakras/unfluoridated water and if we could adopted those practices we could live to be 150.
It’s a form of “nostalgie pour la boue”.
Now THAT would be quality Reality TV…
“Here is our returning champion, Bill Whittle, who as of today has a grand total of $5000 for breaking into a museum & cutting out Cheops eye-patches. But will he advance to the win the ultimate prize of One Million Dollars?”
**flash applause sign
**
All we know for sure as that Mr Whittle is now our Very Next Guest… On…
[Crowd Chants] Chain. Saw. Surgery…! [/Crowd Chants]
Cue four bars of a cheesy repeating brass line
Waiting for the guffaws to die out.
Oh wait, that won’t happen.
It’s crazy to believe in something about science with no evidence. Well, it’s either crazy or ignorant. Take your pick.
Ancient Egyptian civil engineering was clearly impressive, and we have plenty of evidence for that.
Ancient Egyptian accomplishments in mathematics were respectable given the era; their ability to survey the land after every flood and re-establish property lines and boundaries was stellar; time keeping was excellent (had to predict the flood, after all); and their accomplishments regarding metallurgy and some types of chemistry (they were among the first to utilize glass) were in the lead for their time period. They had a complex written language. Oh, and they were able to perform some surgical techniques with success despite a complete lack of antibiotics, notion of germ theory, or anesthetic (well, they had alcohol and probably opium, particularly in later dynasties).
These are all remarkable accomplishments. They led to one of the first great civilizations on the planet and that is no small thing.
That said, we are FAR advanced in any science or technology you care to name, way beyond the people of ancient Kemet. Largely because we are standing on the shoulders of our predecessors, who worked out things like basic mathematics, geometry, time-keeping, government planning and funding of projects, civil engineering, metallurgy, chemistry, laws, international diplomacy… you know, the stuff the First Great Civilizations worked out, which laid the groundwork for later accomplishments.
If anything, making false claims about people thousands of years ago only detracts from their real accomplishments.
And for even more fun, explain how if it’s known by anyone today it’s not “our understanding”.
Our own is better.
Look at the Interstate Highway System.
Our highway system is unlikely to last 4500 years. Hell, it barely survives the winter in some places.
Anyone who builds anything that last that long, particularly with long periods of zero maintenance, is doing a damn fine job. When something we’ve built lasts that long and is that robust maybe we can claim we’re better. Honestly, as monument builders the Ancient Egyptians are in a league of their own.
The thing is, we have no idea how the Interstate Highway System was built. Probably aliens.
The highway system is actually used. The pyramids don’t actually do anything but sit there. I doubt they would last long if they had hundreds of tons of vehicles driving over them.
Or perhaps they’re overbuilding.
In the case of the pyramids, I suppose they were intended to last as near to forever as possible. In the case of the great Roman works, it’s a different matter. They overbuilt out of respect for their own ignorance.
That is, the Romans didn’t know the parallelogram of forces, so they couldn’t do the math. Instead, they relied on rules of thumb about what had worked in the past, and stuck to what worked, and overbuilt as a general rule to avoid embarrassing the leadership. If they had known that they could have built a structure to last only 200 years by trimming just so, and it would have saved enough in the budget to commit to more public works, they would have! Instead, they built things that lasted 10 times that long, in some cases.
Today we could build things to last 2000 years, if we wanted to, but that would be idiotic. We can’t assess the needs that far ahead, and we don’t want to spend the resources necessary for more than the predictable need. (Sadly, we often do less than that; for example, in the US we tend to build inferior roads because we can build more of them on a lower budget, but in the long run it bites us in the ass, requiring a higher maintenance budget. But still we focus on the short term because that’s what impacts elections. Sigh. But we KNOW we’re doing this; it’s no mystery.)
And they’re well-worn, by uncountable (well, by me) tons of stone.
Honestly, the pyramids don’t impress me, and haven’t since I outgrew childhood, deMille’s Ten Commandments and bubble gum. They’re simply piles of cut stone, rubble that sticks up out of the landscape and spoil the view. And they put the squeeze on Cairo. Pick up any rock. It’s as old or older than any stone on any pyramid.
I wouldn’t visit them, even if I had the chance and was equipped with a personal force field against sharp blades, bullets and bombs. The weather sucks.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the workers who built the pyramids were unionized. I doubt their medical care was thanks to any altruistic CEO of Egypt.
But then I’m not impressed by 7-Elevens, either.
I was at a conference one time. A pavement expert gave this passionate talk (he shoulda be a revival preacher or car salesman).
Anyway, I never forget one of his quotes.
“One day Americans will decide we are going to stay here awhile and actually build roads that last”.
“Just sitting there” is what the pyramids are supposed to do. And while they haven’t been driven over, they have been “quarried” from time to time by locals in need of stone. There is so damn much stone there, however, that it hasn’t made much of a dent in them (they did lose the original much nicer veneer because apparently that was really nice stone for building. Too good to leave lying around for dead rulers.)
Just a few weeks ago I biked on sections of the Appian Way in Rome that are around 2500 years old. Some sections still take car traffic on a regular basis.
Superb post and superb point. It’s foolish to try to attribute “magic” to the Egyptians, given that what they really did accomplish was remarkable and beyond. They performed and built wonders.
It’s a foolish insult to them to say that they had to use magic (or geysers) or that they had to rely on alien assistance.
(It’s an insult to us to say they were more advanced than we are now!)
They knew pi to the equivalent of six decimal places. That’s damn astonishing. And, yeah, we know it to some billions of decimal places, but when’s the last time anyone used that much accuracy in milling or lathing?
(Latheing? Tho to thpeak?)
That would impress me, if it were true, because it appears that civil courts came about as soon as a third person showed up to be the judge. Even animals go to Mom for relief when Brother is being mean. That ancient Egypt was not completely tied up in court for literal millennia seems unbelievable. 
Oh, it’s true - the annual flood wiped out most boundary markings, which had to be re-established every year. They did it using only basic geometry and math, a very basic tools like plumb lines, measuring ropes (which were treated to maintain a standard length while being used), sighting-staves, and an instrument for determining right angles.
The same basic skills also let them lay out vast temple complexes and the pyramid bases and cut/shape massive blocks of stone. They also used water-based leveling techniques for creating flat building foundations (including those of massive monuments like the pyramids). Taxes were assessed based on land area, and gain or loss of field area after the annual flood with subsequent adjustment in tax amounts was a very important civil function of government.
The Egyptians were quite good at getting impressive results with only the most basic of tools.
Then there’s the question as to which race those ancient Egyptians actually were … But we probably don’t need to go there.