Ancient civilizations and technology

[inconsequential]

I've been watching some programs about this and was a bit shocked to realize that I was thinking like I'd been programmed to think. If humans are an evolving species, we are better and more advanced now than at any other point in history. Right? These ancient technological marvels HAVE to be gifts from aliens. Right? Ummm...no.

Then it occurred to me that maybe our ancestors were smarter than we give them credit for being. What was the Tower of Babel meant to really be? We know that a tower can't be built to literally reach Heaven. I'm sure God knows that too so why scatter humanity to stop an abysmally futile project?

Any thoughts on the issue?

 

[Trying_to_be_Orthodox]

i'll not be surprised if humanity is not first on this planet, we are not alone in universe, quite not alone and Earth is not best planet for living for beings with intellect.

 

[inconsequential]

I'm not sure anymore what to believe wrt aliens. I've even heard speculation that the gray aliens everyone talks about are our distant descendents traveling back into their past to study their ancient ancestors. I don't put much stock in such things and tend to thing of such visitations as being demonic.

I am very interested in what technological advancements ancient humans had. How advanced we're people before the Flood? It's easy to think of them as being like cave men but I don't buy that. What "promethian" ideas might the nephilim, or their fathers, have devised?

 

[Dorothea]

read over responses. Nm.

 

[gzt]

If you're interested in a scholarly approach, I can personally recommend The Exact Sciences in Antiquity by Neugebauer, which will give you a better appreciation of Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics and astronomy and their transmission to the Greek world, though the Babylonian part may require acknowledgement of the existence of slightly more than 7521 years of civilization, but not much more. It will also give some context to the current calendar controversy! The book might be a bit old, but it's one of the books we used. This is more about math and astronomy and less about technology, but it definitely indicates how much the ancients could figure out. I mean, Hipparchus, based on these records, discovered the precession of the equinoxes, which is a 23,000 year cycle. Aristarchus may have beaten him. Ptolemy, for all he gets beaten up for later, was truly phenomenal. Without exaggeration, some have posited that the first person after Ptolemy to fully understand him was Copernicus. That's over 1000 years. And it wasn't because the people after him were any slouches.

As for technology, while there might be individual technological advancements that are really quite impressive, the "whole picture" didn't quite come out until a little more recently. But it is certainly very wrong to not give the ancients the credit they are due. The book above provides a full appreciation of some of their achievements. However, it's also important not to overstate what, exactly, they were able to accomplish.

 

[Lirenel]

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people think ancient people were dirty 'primitives' with the brain power of a pea. They were human. They were created in the image and likeness of God. They discovered, the created, they imagined, they investigated, they theorized, they did everything that we do now. Yes they often came to different conclusions. Often they were 'wrong' conclusions (that hasn't changed much either). But they thought and created because they were created to think and create. (or, as Tolkien put it, subcreate).

Why is it impossible to believe that humans could create amazing technologies in ancient times?

The story of the Tower of Babel, to me, is simply the story of pride, of humans thinking they could be more than God, perhaps conquer Him, and about how that is impossible. It's a lesson humans continue to need to learn. I'm sure someone with more knowledge could quote the Church Fathers on more and better explanations than that.

 

[NannaNae]

I've been watching some programs about this and was a bit shocked to realize that I was thinking like I'd been programmed to think. If humans are an evolving species, we are better and more advanced now than at any other point in history. Right? These ancient technological marvels HAVE to be gifts from aliens. Right? Ummm...no.

Then it occurred to me that maybe our ancestors were smarter than we give them credit for being. What was the Tower of Babel meant to really be? We know that a tower can't be built to literally reach Heaven. I'm sure God knows that too so why scatter humanity to stop an abysmally futile project?

Any thoughts on the issue?

Enoch says that angels who later fell.. gave humanity these
"gifts" so that we would have all things we needed( tools , clothing etc) , but these same gifts which separated or isolated us...especially in our minds and that always causes fear to breed whenever someone is different . looks different , acts different or has different things then fear or jealousy occurs then thefts and death is short to follow. it is the worst part of tribalism .
fear is truly a nasty nasty critter/ entity .

but yes science-ish refuses to make sense of what is known so they just keep perpetutation the same old stupid lies and raciest ideas about people and tribes and history . it is very very sad what they have done to our world..

ps

yes and the tower of babel/ babbling probably isn't a tower..

but probably either a pyramid or a pulpit of academia/ philosophy / religion.

yep... aint nothing new under this sun.

here is the word in the bible and their break down in strongs.


Gen 11:5
And the LORD H3068 came down H3381 to see H7200 the city H5892 and the tower, H4026 which the children H1121 of men H120 builded. H1129


Hebrew Lexicon :: H4026 (KJV)

it says

tower
tower
elevated stage, pulpit
raised bed




so this could be stage for educational purposes, it could be a flat topped pyramid of some kind too .

so what was this power or this tower , this pulpit, this elevated stage?
what was it for ?

purposes of academia?
religion ?
to gain power ?
to create influence in order to lord it over others ?
sure it was rebellion and witchcraft and control.
nothing new under this sun..


We always forget that the death and the Anti(everything ) seen is anti man, it is not anti god it pretends to be . it pretends to be anti religion or whatever it needs to in each age to elevate itself .
The anti is against man fulfilling who it is that God created us to be.
they want to control... or lord over ..

They/ of death / of anti want to be like a god , they don't want to be like men were to be .

sure so if you have any questions about ancient buildings and stone movements and such we can talk about how the ancients did it . and ps it didn't involve space crafts..

 

[buzuxi02]

Most of what we consider modern technological innovation has all come about in the past 150 years.
Advancements in travel, media and communications are fairly recent. It really has nothing to do with evolution but simply because these advancements could not have occurred before it did because man didn't have the need for them. Travel, media and communications already presupposes a population explosion, there is no need for cell phones and airplanes and internet if the world's population is only a few hundred million tribesmen. But as populations explode and urbanization takes place and people move away from their tribal regions, we see how these things benefit.

Since technological visionaries and mavericks aren't born all the time, a population increase also increases the amount of visionaries born. This is why countries that are immigration friendly tend to be more advanced. First off a nation that attracts diverse peoples already means those migrants are attracted their because they will be granted freedom not to conform entirely, as these cultures are not monolithic, this will attracts those mavericks. And the second and bigger reason is these 'diverse tribesman' are now competing with each other, not over territory any longer but are in competition to be more successful, the need to 'one up' the other in achievements.

Eventually all things reach a tipping point where we revert back to a 'dark age'; a stagnant era where humanity reassesses the excess and decadence their achievements have wrought. The entire cycle is necessary, and is summed up in one phrase: "Keeping up with the Jones".

 

[ArmyMatt]

I think they were much smarter than we give them credit. heck, the Minoans had flush toilets and basement lighting.

 

[inconsequential]

I often wonder about things like how might Rome have been different if they had safer piping material than lead for aqueduct siphons. I've read that lead poisoning was widespread.

 

[Joseph Hazen]

I agree that we're conditioned, or naturally assume, that just because we came after 'them' we must be a more advanced type. It's a macro version of our own disdain for the phases we've gone through in our own, short lives. Just the other day I found an old journal of mine and was grumbling over how stupid and silly I had been just a few years ago. I think contemporary humans look at that in their own lives and tend to think "So if those guys lived that long ago, how much more silly and stupid they must have been!"

Yet put one of us in their shoes and lets see how long we survive lol.

An added problem with this is the assumption that we're progressing in all areas, and that we're becoming morally better as well. Many people today believe that if a movement is gaining steam in contemporary times and it is different from what came before, it must therefor be the better choice; after all, we've experienced the other one and now we're choosing to abandon it, right? Gay 'marriage' as a type of equality is a standard of this view, and so is the wider spread of inappropriate contentography, informality, abortion, and a host of other issues. We view any movement towards a historical perspective as being 'backward' in the moral and linear sense; these returns are acceptable only in clothing and such, they're ok as affectations, but socially repugnant. After all, we left that behind, so what we have now must be better, right?

I'll start rambling soon if I haven't already, but you've hit on one of my biggest pet peeves. I can't stand people going off about aliens or what-not regarding historical mores and civilization. It's the old scramble of Europeans to explain away the contributions of the Africans (see the history of Zimbabwe) just our own ancestors are considered the ignorant savages now. It's as equally as arrogant and insulting, however.

 

[Trying_to_be_Orthodox]

@inconsequential

I am very interested in what technological advancements ancient humans had. How advanced we're people before the Flood?

- Think, one of main technology must be linked with possibility to visit/connect with "invisible world"/spirit world/astral/and etc. Actually this our possibility is closed by default except some kinda mutations. But there are ways for humans to "reopen" spirit eye.

I've read book of one investigator. His idea is that humanity is 5th race on Earth and connection with spirit world is closed due all previous races had used it in destructive applications.

 

[inconsequential]

I watched a program last night where a guy made a Baghdad battery with period technology, modelled after the original and using orange juice, it was hitting 3 volts.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

I often wonder about things like how might Rome have been different if they had safer piping material than lead for aqueduct siphons. I've read that lead poisoning was widespread.

That would definitely have made the difference in many ways....

 

[Gxg (G²)]

I watched a program last night where a guy made a Baghdad battery with period technology, modelled after the original and using orange juice, it was hitting 3 volts.

What was the name of the program? Would love to check it out..

 

[inconsequential]

One was "Ancient Aliens" but there was another that touched more on the tech itself than speculation about where it came from. That Greek guy with the Centauri hair style was on one of them.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

One was "Ancient Aliens" but there was another that touched more on the tech itself than speculation about where it came from. That Greek guy with the Centauri hair style was on one of them.

I know about the "Ancient Aliens" show - but I don't know many Greek guys with Centauri hair on T.V.

 

[inconsequential]

George Tsoukalas. Or was it Londo Mollari?

 

[buzuxi02]

Karl Benz is credited with inventing the 'modern' automobile because he was the first to develop and bring to patent the internal combustion engine. In reality there were a couple of others developing this same concept engine simultaneously but thy weren't first at the patent office so Benz is the guy credited in the history books. It was also not a coincidence that a few people were working on an engine since the whole point was to improve on the steam engines used on steam carriages (the first buses). And the reason why steam buses were invented was because of Transportation needs which arose because of the growth of the large cities. Horse drawn carriages simply became obsolete for long distance travel. For what its worth wiki explains the origins of steam buses:

Regular intercity bus services by steam-powered buses were pioneered in England in the 1830s by Walter Hancock and by associates of Sir Goldsworthy Gurney among others, running reliable services over road conditions which were too hazardous for horse-drawn transportation. Steam carriages were much less likely to overturn, and did not "run away with" the customer as horses sometimes did. They travelled faster than horse-drawn carriages (24 mph over four miles and an average of 12 mph over longer distances). They could run at a half to a third of the cost of horse-drawn carriages. Their brakes did not lock and drag like horse-drawn transport (a phenomenon that increased damage to roads). According to engineers, steam carriages caused one-third the damage to the road surface as that caused by the action of horses' feet. Indeed, the wide tires of the steam carriages (designed for better traction) caused virtually no damage to the streets, whereas the narrow wheels of the horse-drawn carriages (designed to reduce the effort required of horses) tended to cause rutting

Thus steam engine mobile transportation improved on the horse when the phenomenon of inter city travel became a necessity and the internal combustion engine improved on the steam engine, hence an industry was born.

But even certain automobile technologies predate all of this; a prototype primitive automobile (all early cars were simply horseless carriages) was invented in 1791 by Russian inventor Ivan Kulibin. It was a "Flintstones" carriage needing to be pedaled but had innovations like a transmission, a steering gear box and brakes.

Technology is borrowed, built, and improved upon previous designs when a necessity arises. The difference in the past was that inventors had to be financed for them to develop their prototypes. This was hard to do, they either worked and tried to figure out things on their own spare time without information of a 'team' of engineers and devoid of fabrication machinery because they themselves laid the foundations and left the information for us future generations to build upon those ideas and build those machines. And yes competition to be the first to the patent and money and fame speeds up advancement just look at Edison and Tesla

 

[inconsequential]

I watched an episode of "Ancient Impossible" last night and it was really interesting. The looked at how the Egyptians moved giant stones, how the Romans built reverse siphons to get aqueducts to span valleys without building huge bridges. They looked at the Roman siege of Masada and how they took the fortress with earthworks and a giant siege tower.

I think this is the show where they make the battery but in a different episode.