The Mayan temples are incredible too, they were pretty advanced. The steps of the Pyramid of Kukulkan in Chichen Itza are designed to look like a snake is coming down or heading up them on each equinox, 21st March and 21st September each year. Also the acoustics mean that if you clap your hands in front of the temple the echo sounds like the call of the quetzal bird. I've tested the clapping and it's mad! The most fascinating place I've ever been to however is the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo. So many pieces that even now they can't explain how they carved some of the statues. There's a tiny statue of a Pharaoh carved out of basalt, the base is perfectly square, it was the tour guides favourite piece as it's still confusing scholars today.
Me and Mrs Smug, during Covid, drove up a long dirt track into the heart of the Pyrenees until it seemed we were looking down on the whole world, absolutely incredible. There wasn’t another human for ten miles and all we could see were a few twinkling lights that we took for faraway houses. We stayed there for a week just walking and cooking when we returned to camp. We woke up one night and went outside the tent to find a huge black sky above us with thousands of stars, clusters and meteorites, it was absolutely hypnotic. We realised that we knew what we were looking at but wondered what Bronze Age people would think. They’d have to try to make sense of it and decided they were the gods and the heavens looking down on them. That kind of awe and, probably, terrror when there were lightning bolts that could fry you would make you build monuments and give sacrifices to appease them. Building a few monuments would seem a fair exchange not to have them destroy you I’d imagine.
I live in Derbyshire and we have our share of stone circles. Nowhere near as big as Stonehenge though. My favourite is one called nine ladies. The story goes nine ladies were turned to stone for dancing on the sabbath. Arbor Low is a really important one. One of a handful that has a centre bit which I cant remember much about, other than the guidebook says only major sacred sites had them. It is 50 limestone slabs, all fairly big, but all fallen now. Looks like a domino rally I always think. I guess all stone circles had some of sacred purpose. Arbor Low is near a famous burial ground which makes me think some spaces were actually linked in some sacred way. Stonehenge is built in a region with other sacred purposes. I think there are more than 70 known prehistoric stone circles near the nine ladies for example.
This video is 20 odd minutes long, and whilst I don’t particularly subscribe to every theory suggested, I’m at a loss for any kind of rational explanation. Ancient cultures across the globe depicting ‘deities’ carrying handbags? Apparent sculptures of spacemen, modern day technology etc. So, what’s the answer (I certainly don’t have it, so using my ‘ask the audience’ lifeline)
Not really. Geometrically it's the easiest shape to build a large monument. Wide at the base rising to a point makes it stable.
But why all make monuments at a similar time? I get the building angle I think. I wonder why they needed them. It seems the Peru ones have a cathedral on the top, the egypt ones are supposedly about burial. Different use cases but the same building? Would still be a coincidence of some proportion imo.
We have many geniuses in the modern world, and many very capable people There would also be many hugely capable geniuses in the Ancient world, capable of all sorts of amazing things They were physically the same as us,with the same brains Ancient peoples were much, much more capable than they are generally given credit for, more and more evidence is coming to the surface proving this every year
The Antikythera mechanism is a fascinating example of this. We vastly under estimate how advanced previous civilisations have been. It doesn't have to be aliens, giants, or magic which built these things, it's just that people have been pretty clever for a long time, and maybe we're not at the peak of it like we think we are.
Granted - Da Vinci for one example. Literally hundreds of years ahead of his time. Your theory, although I don’t fall out with it completely, doesn’t explain the simultaneous building of identical buildings, across the globe, by peoples unknown to one another, many thousands of years ago. Further to this, and similarly, the handbag sculptures - why were people, literally in every corner of the globe depicting the same thing? I just think there are some things lost to time that we haven’t explanation for, so all theories should be considered
could be natural I suppose, but still… https://static.toiimg.com/thumb/102426639/antarctica.jpg?width=1200&height=900
Wasn't that one a basis for a Dan Brown story? Probably the only book that didn't get turned into a movie for some reason.
For some yes, for others not so much. I dont like the focus on Graham Hancock. He is a self proclaimed mouthpiece for the community that like to question science, and present alternative ideas. That said, in my opinion, the scientific community hide behind him somewhat as the so called 'pseudo archeologist' and use him as evidence of crackpot theories that should not be listened to. I think that is unfair, but he plays to the crowds now so I have little sympathy. There are numerous qualified archeologists and other scientists questioning the understanding we have. They ask what I consider to be plausible questions, but often get shut down too quickly, if they associate with the likes of Hancock. My opinion anyway. Full transparency, I work in HE and academia. I am not an academic. I am what some academics still call an admin guy. The university calls me a professional services guy. That shift happened as little as 10 years ago. Admin to professional service. There are academics, thankfully reducing in number, who still I am just admin to serve them. The real reality I have spent more time gaining my qualifications than they have in many circumstances. I run part of the IT org that interacts with academia, and quite often researchers or academics come to me to tell me what to do for them. My first reaction is why. Some really hate that question. A non-academic asking and academic why! After the why I more often than not say no. For a minority it creates a borderline self-combustion. Over the last 10 years I am glad to say that is lessening, and it is a more and more respectful relationship. Still some way to go. None of this may be relevant, but my experience of trying to help academic colleagues do the right and best thing, from an IT perspective, is maddening. AI is creating a whole new challenge, but that is for another thread. I wonder if this is how they react to challenge to their research from those they deem unqualified? Science, in my opinon at least, do a great job of making their work and findings impregnable to the normal bloke. I listen to Brian Cox, and find him maddening. The amount of times he laughs at alternative theories, or daft questions, is divisive. Patrick Moore never behaved in that way to be honest. Ramble over. I just think questioning, asking why, challenging, and being inquisitive is healthy. Science needs to open up, Hancock and his peers need to pipe down. There is way too much evidence coming out all the time to think our understanding of the ancient world is 100% locked in. Seems to me we know very little, so why not ask questions and make suggestions. Healthy debate nevet hurt many.
