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There’s a Giant Flaw in Human History
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From AI Overview:
Ancient civilizations developed technologies far ahead of their time, leaving behind engineering, metallurgy, and computing marvels that still baffle modern scientists. These early cultures mastered applied science and complex mechanics without modern tools, establishing the foundational principles for much of our contemporary world. [1, 2, 3]
Here is a look at some of the most advanced technologies developed in the ancient world:
- The Antikythera Mechanism (Ancient Greece): Discovered in a 2,000-year-old shipwreck, this geared device is considered the world's first analog computer. It was used to track solar eclipses, map planetary movements, and calculate lunar cycles.
- Self-Healing Roman Concrete (Ancient Rome): Many structures across the Roman Empire, such as the Pantheon, have survived for nearly two millennia. This is due to a highly durable, specialized mixture containing volcanic ash and lime that allows the material to repair its own micro-cracks over time.
- Nanotechnology in the Lycurgus Cup (Roman Empire): This 4th-century glass chalice changes color depending on the direction of the light hitting it. Scientists discovered this is due to microscopic gold and silver nanoparticles embedded in the glass, a level of molecular precision that cannot be easily replicated even today.
- The Chinese Seismoscope (Ancient China): Invented by Zhang Heng around 132 CE, this intricate bronze device was designed to detect distant earthquakes. When a tremor occurred, an internal pendulum would trigger a ball to drop from one of eight dragon-shaped mouths, pointing exactly to the earthquake's origin.
- Advanced Water Engineering (The Nabataeans / Petra): The Nabataeans transformed Petra into a thriving desert city by engineering a massive, complex hydraulic network. They utilized pipelines, dams, cisterns, and covered tunnels to capture flash floods and distribute high-pressure water across incredibly difficult terrain.
- Advanced Urban Planning (Indus Valley Civilization): Cities like Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa (modern-day Pakistan and India) were built on highly standardized grid systems. They featured advanced sanitation infrastructure, including covered sewers and private indoor bathrooms, centuries before such systems became common in Europe.
- Legendary Metallurgy (India & The Middle East): Ancient Indian smiths mastered the production of Wootz steel, which was exported across Asia and the Middle East and later served as the basis for Damascus steel. These blades were known for their sharpness, flexibility, and unique nanoscale carbon-tube structures.
- Unrivaled Stonework (Inca Civilization): The Inca cut and fitted massive, multi-ton stone blocks together with such perfect precision that even a razor blade cannot fit between them. This feat—achieved without the use of iron tools—also resulted in structures highly resistant to earthquakes.
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Warden_of_the_Storm
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And none of those are what Steve is talking about, especially, as I have pointed out at least three times now, whenever he has said advanced technology, he has refused to elaborate on what he means.
Also, the whole thing with 'stones so tight that a razor can't fit between them' is... what even is that? That's not 'advanced', that's basic stone masonry. You don't want loose stones in your wall!
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Can you explain this verse in the light of advanced technology?
Le 25:4 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.
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Thats an obvious falsehood. You did not try very hard. I explained several times alternative ways the advanced knowledge could have been used to create some of these works. For example in post #1,623
Stevevw said
this does not exclude for example that the ancients gained a deeper knowledge of the materials they worked with to be able to manipulate the material itself rather than using the conventional methods of gradually pounding or grinding rocks as the orthodoxy claims.
I must have said this 10 plus times. That the ancients may have had knowledge about nature itself and were able to manipulate materials and the chemical nature to either soften or make weaker stones to cut them or reshape them. This would leave no machines because it was about changing the material that conventional tools could be used.
But not only that while looking I found other posters who agreed with me that you don't have to find the actual advanced tech to work out what caused the marks. Remember the gun shot example. You don't need to find the gun to work out that a gun was the weapon even on cold cases decades old.
Stevev said in post #1,034 referring to your claim. "Did not the poster I was replying to just literally say because I cannot produce the evidence of any lathe that this in itself refutes the claim that a lathe might have been used. I used the example of not finding the gun doesn't mean the bullet hole signatures don't point to a gun".
BCP1928 said
"You might not ever find one even if they had any. It is entirely possible to build a stone-cutting lathe with no moving parts that would leave little or nothing in the archaeological record".
Then
Post #1,037 Stevevw said "Its possible that there was a more sophisticated way of lathing or maching or producing the works that would also leave nothing in the records". BCP1928 said
Possible but not necessary.
So we have other posters agreeing with me that it is not necessary to find the exact tech or device to work out what could have caused the marks. Just like the bullet hole from a cold case we can determine that a gun was used without finding the gun.
Much of the works from pre dynastic Egyptians and other ancient peoples have left no tools, nothing. Giant cuts at 10 foot long and no giant saws. Massive megaliths lifted into the air or moved 100s of miles without one trace of any lifting materials.
Yet you demand that we find the giant 10 foot saws and lifting cranes before we can be assured it was the method. Your own logic defeats your own arguement for the orthodoxy as we also don't have the tech from that period for even the orthodox methods used.
So please stop making stuff up.
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essentialsaltes
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Advanced technology? Leaving fields fallow is an ancient technique.
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At least you acknowledged the video for what it is. Some don't even do that. Just dismiss it all out of hand as bunk
Wow introducing Darwinism. That has not been introduced as yet. Interesting but I don't think is a good way to see this as even Darwinism is under dispute. Especially when it comes to cultural beliefs and human agency. Can Darwiniam refute God. Can it account for the cultural and religious practices as being purely material behaviours derived from genetics and natural selection.
Yes and thankyou for agreeing. We have constantly revised our understanding and still we don't fully know. We keep discovering new info that causes us to revise what we thought of how humans evolved and developed.
Yes according to the materialist view through evolution all religion is a myth. Yet still the ancients themselves and people today continue to claim it was so.
The bible offers an alternative history. It speaks about the table of nations and how humans developed into tribes and cities that defied God and how some of these were destroyed.
Genesis speaks of the creation of the material world by God. Science and evolution speak of existence and human life as being self created and out of nothing. Which one is more a myth. Neither can be verified.
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Ah the old "looks like" as opposed to "what is". Or perhaps "what is assumed due to injecting modern ideas into the past". Why didn't you include this possibility. That modern bias can be forced into ancient ways.
Its funny because I remember showing images of clear sharp and narrow cuts in the hardest stone and even skeptics saying it looks like modern machining cuts. Even implying that these were modern forgeries where someone came along with a modern circular saw and made cuts into ancient works.
So even the skeptics see things this way Hans. Your logic doesn't follow. If it looks like a duck and walks like one then chances are its a duck.
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That does not refute that there were advanced knowledge or ways. I keep repeating this.
Ah so tell me the very, very fine gaps at the famous multi-sided, interlocking stone walls in Peru are scientifically known as polygonal masonry at Sacsayhuamán. You say these stones have been gradually shaped with multiple shapes for each and every individual stone.
That they continually placed the stone in situ and then took it back out again to adjust its surface until it matched perfectly. That would require dozens of repeated lifting of multi ton blocks in and out of situ to get the perfect alignment.
Is that what you are claiming ?
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Hans Blaster
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Wow, indeed, Steve. This exactly what @Warden_of_the_Storm and I and others have indicated about you dragging things off topic. This thread isn't about your god. It isn't really about evolution (even in the "Button framing" of your OP). Any development of cognitive capacity would be "Darwinian" and gradual as these are complex traits controlled by many, many genes. (And the notion of "Darwinism" is out of date by at least a century. It's just called "evolution" now.)
Humans have been making and using fire for at least 500,000 years.
Oh, Steve, does it go in one ear and out the other? Is comprehending a written sentence too much work? Our frield, Ol' Voidy was talking not about "all religion" or "myth", just that Button's video doesn't contribute to believing what is written in Genesis.
Do you know what an etiological story is? Look it up.
No, chapter one talks about the reshaping of the formless state into a state with form. Nothing is "created", only rearranged.
Are you that ignorant? The scientific view (evolution) is that human life evolved from earlier forms of life, notably earlier apes, earlier primates, earlier mammals, earlier quadrapeds, earlier fish, earlier chordates, earlier bilaterians, earlier multicellular animals, etc. There is always a something earlier.
The evolutionary path is backed with genetics and fossils.
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Hans Blaster
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I know I've shown you this creator and likely this video before. Watch it this time:
They were used to doing manual labor.
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Hans Blaster
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Modern biases? As has been pointed out, your hundred year old source that comments about the stone working around the incomplete obelisk looking like it was scooped out DID NOT BELIEVE THAT WAS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Believing in "scooping" or "rock softening" is for modern fools.
Some times an ancient cut looks like it was made by modern machines, sometimes cuts on ancient stones were actually cut in modern times. There are dozens of posts above
No, the forgeries were from the "vase grifters". Those are about circular machining (lathing) to make fakes. It has nothing to do with cuts.
Please learn to read.
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Lol you are literally doubling down on the same metaphysical beliefs that claim Darwinism can account for belief in God and thus making God a myth.
Is that what you claim. That God is a myth and its actually the result of genes.
Whats that got to do with belief in God or the biblical account of our history.
It does if you consider that he was generally saying that the historical narratives told by the same people like yourself who claim God is a myth. Its the same belief. The same people who dismiss God are the same people who dismiss ancient and indigenous knowledge as myth.
Yes why. How does this change the reality of the biblical stories. Is not it about the origins of human history which includes their culture. The discovery of examples like Gobekli Tepe was not just that we found a human made site more advanced for that time than we thought possible.
But that it told us about humans themselves and their originas of thinking and belief as to who they may have gathered and developed. What motivated them to build such examples. Your excluding an entire component of human history and only measuring the material results.
Have you forgotton the very first verse "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". That is a claim to creating the material world from nothing material.
Which to theist God set in motion. There was something ealier which was the laws and codes which produced that life. Nothing that is non life can create life. Have you also forgotton the bible ?
When it comes to consciousness, morality and belief in God there is no evolutionary explanation that can account for this. You are assuming there is when there is absolutely nothing. Genes cannot produce consciousness or belief in Gods. This comes from something that transcends material evolution. Its like saying a slab of cheese can think and have feelings. Two completely different paradigms.
Not for consciousness and belief in Gods. Show me the evolutionary explaination for this. I bet you can't. Its an assumption and belief itself. It steps beyond the science and into a belief Hans. Your belief that its not possible and your belief in materialism.
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Hans Blaster
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I did not mention your god. Evolution (not "darwinism") has nothing to do with a god of any kind.
Nope.
Nothing, because this thread is not about your god. I was still replying to your comments related to Mr. Button's 'humans were more advanced earlier" claims. That includes how humans had cognitive faculties to make fire 0.5 million years ago.
You should go read @2PhiloVoid 's post more carefully. I said nothing about your god. This thread is not about your god.
If you really know what etiology, then you'll know what I think about the biblical tales about the origins of various peoples (and what real bible scholars say too). None of this is the topic of the thread.
You already have my answer. (Which you claim to understand.)
No. A better translation (NRSV, Updated Ed.):
When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
The earth and waters already existed. Creation ex nihlio is (as I recall) orginated when Judaism (and then Christianity) are influenced by Greek philosophy. (As I recall, also the tri-omni nature of Yahweh, the "Logos", and a few other things. But none of that is relevant to this thread in the slightest.)
The bible is way after the period covered by this thread which is mostly about pre-history, plus a bit of pre-Israelite civilizations like Sumer and Egypt.
Irrelevant to thread.
You are lost. This is not the thread for it, nor does either your opinion or mine relevant to any of the discussion we've had here.
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Warden_of_the_Storm
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If you want to say they were advanced, you need to show they were advanced.
And, as Hans pointed out, you seem adverse to the idea that the ancients knew what manual labour was. Do you know what a stone mason is? It's an ancient job that still exists even today.
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The first that I want to point out is how this is a double standard and hypocracy. You have been harping on about the sources, about individual presenters I linked being crack pots. Now you link one yourself. It seems the rules apply to me and not yourself.
This is the main reason I stopped last time. because everything I presented was made out to be crackpots and yet skeptics were doing the exact same thing and treating their own sources as gospel. Is this evidence suddenly gospel because you linked it and not me. Give me abreak.
Second the presenter acknowledges Brian Forrester who mentions some of these alternative methods as doing good scientific work. So he actually supports Forrester one of the crackpots you claim is full of rubbish. Your presenter is just another video maker and nothing different to the ones I linked. This is sheer hypocracy.
Third your presenter acknowledges there was more than one method. The original works at the bottom are out of the bedrock. They are shaped directly out of the existing bedrock and called Hanan Pacha. The second type and method are the megalith blocks laid on top of the bedrock that came later which are the polygonal masonry at Sacsayhuamán for example and pre Inca. They are called Uran Pacha.
The last type are the loose stone walling that is at the very top made by the Inca much later and others who came along in repeairing and adding to the original works. This is called Ukun Pacha
So the methods are not the same. Your video may cover one example that comes later but not necessarily the Hanan Pacha and Uran Pacha methods.
Hanan Pacha, Uran Pacha and Ukun Pacha
Here is an example of the large megalith stone walls (Uran Pacha) and how they show that these may have been softened to allow for the very tight fits. Where the weight of the stones being softened sank into each other as they hardened. Showing sharp edges and places where the stone seemed to squeeze up between gaps leaving a protrusion in the same shape as the gap they squeezed into.
Otherwise are you saying the ancient Purvians shaped each and every surface to fit. Spent so much time making the sharp angles and squeezed up sufaces that look like they compressed between gaps. That this was all shaped by hand.
Why bother when they would never be seen. Just a rough shape would be enough. .Why spend all that time on making them look smooth and finished when no would ever see them. They look very smooth and flat like they were finished to the same degree as the fine works on the face of blocks.
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