Ancient Technology that may or may not be Ahead of its Time, or Even True
- Thread starter Will The Serious
- Start date
Was Djoser's pyramid built using a volcano style hydrolic lift?
The Djoser Pyramid today
A computer rendering of the Djoser Pyramid.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hydraulic-lift-egypts-first-pyramid
The landscape surrounding the Djoser Pyramid.
From the online article: https://www.sci.news/archaeology/pyramid-djoser-hydraulic-lift-system-13154.html
"In a new transdisciplinary analysis, Dr. Xavier Landreau from CEA Paleotechnic Institute and colleagues discovered that a hydraulic lift may have been used to build the pyramid.
Based on their mapping of the nearby watersheds, the authors found that one of the unexplained massive Saqqara structures, the Gisr el-Mudir enclosure, has the features of a check dam with the intent to trap sediment and water.
In addition, a series of compartments dug into the ground outside of the pyramid may have served as a water treatment facility, allowing sediment to settle as water passed through each subsequent compartment.
Water may then have been able to flow into the pyramid shafts themselves, where the force of its rise could help carry the building stones.
Further research is still needed to understand how water might have flowed through the shafts, as well as how much water was available on the landscape at that point in Earth’s history.
But the archaeologists suggest that even as other building methods like ramps were probably also used to help build the pyramid, a hydraulic lift system could have been used to support the building process when there was enough water.
“We identified that the Step Pyramid’s internal architecture is consistent with a hydraulic elevation mechanism never reported before,” they said.
“The ancient architects may have raised the stones from the pyramid center in a volcano fashion using the sediment-free water from the Dry Moat’s south section.”
“Ancient Egyptians are famous for their pioneering and mastery of hydraulics through canals for irrigation purposes and barges to transport huge stones.” "
I'm having trouble with this concept. The Djoser Pyramid was not built with the massive 3000 lb. stones that the Pyramid of Giza used, so floating them up on a lift of water is much more conceivable, but where did the water pressure come from to force the water up the central shaft? Of course, more studies need to be done, it hasn't all been worked out. I'm just thinking a hydrolic lift, while maybe not beyond the engineering abilities of the ancient Egyptians (especially Imhotep, the credited architect).
The biggest problem I have is that, a hydrolic system of that complexity and scope, in a mostly flat landscape would have required a way of pouring the water down the shaft, or, even harder, forcing the water up from the bottom. Either way, a large amount of water would have to be lifted to the height of the shaft, either into the shaft directly, or into a nearby reservoir that could then be used to fill the shaft. That seems like a lot of extra work when there was much more basic and simpler technology for carrying the stones up the growing pyramid directly. Occam's Razor
There is an interesting intelligence experiment done with chimpanzees where water was provided in a water bowl and a peanut was set at the bottom of a clear tube. The chimp couldn't get the peanut, but the poor guy easily figured out that he could bring the peanut to him by filling the tube with water. I wouldn't have thought of that.
-Will
The Djoser Pyramid today
A computer rendering of the Djoser Pyramid.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hydraulic-lift-egypts-first-pyramid
The landscape surrounding the Djoser Pyramid.
From the online article: https://www.sci.news/archaeology/pyramid-djoser-hydraulic-lift-system-13154.html
"In a new transdisciplinary analysis, Dr. Xavier Landreau from CEA Paleotechnic Institute and colleagues discovered that a hydraulic lift may have been used to build the pyramid.
Based on their mapping of the nearby watersheds, the authors found that one of the unexplained massive Saqqara structures, the Gisr el-Mudir enclosure, has the features of a check dam with the intent to trap sediment and water.
In addition, a series of compartments dug into the ground outside of the pyramid may have served as a water treatment facility, allowing sediment to settle as water passed through each subsequent compartment.
Water may then have been able to flow into the pyramid shafts themselves, where the force of its rise could help carry the building stones.
Further research is still needed to understand how water might have flowed through the shafts, as well as how much water was available on the landscape at that point in Earth’s history.
But the archaeologists suggest that even as other building methods like ramps were probably also used to help build the pyramid, a hydraulic lift system could have been used to support the building process when there was enough water.
“We identified that the Step Pyramid’s internal architecture is consistent with a hydraulic elevation mechanism never reported before,” they said.
“The ancient architects may have raised the stones from the pyramid center in a volcano fashion using the sediment-free water from the Dry Moat’s south section.”
“Ancient Egyptians are famous for their pioneering and mastery of hydraulics through canals for irrigation purposes and barges to transport huge stones.” "
I'm having trouble with this concept. The Djoser Pyramid was not built with the massive 3000 lb. stones that the Pyramid of Giza used, so floating them up on a lift of water is much more conceivable, but where did the water pressure come from to force the water up the central shaft? Of course, more studies need to be done, it hasn't all been worked out. I'm just thinking a hydrolic lift, while maybe not beyond the engineering abilities of the ancient Egyptians (especially Imhotep, the credited architect).
The biggest problem I have is that, a hydrolic system of that complexity and scope, in a mostly flat landscape would have required a way of pouring the water down the shaft, or, even harder, forcing the water up from the bottom. Either way, a large amount of water would have to be lifted to the height of the shaft, either into the shaft directly, or into a nearby reservoir that could then be used to fill the shaft. That seems like a lot of extra work when there was much more basic and simpler technology for carrying the stones up the growing pyramid directly. Occam's Razor
There is an interesting intelligence experiment done with chimpanzees where water was provided in a water bowl and a peanut was set at the bottom of a clear tube. The chimp couldn't get the peanut, but the poor guy easily figured out that he could bring the peanut to him by filling the tube with water. I wouldn't have thought of that.
-Will
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Talking of forgotten technology, I found the following argument by a serious historian (although on YouTube), persuasive that we shouldn't discount the possibility that advanced human civilisation has risen and fallen previously. One thing he doesn't mention is looking for evidence of industrial pollution in the past. Mankind might have advanced previously, but perhaps not to the current level. Two steps forward, one step back - which is why I refer to this idea as the brutal ratchet.
When he says "We're Probably not the First Civilization", he means an unbroken chain of technological, philosophical, mathematical, and socio-political advancements from the time of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians? Even though we can trace our progress all the way back to the Egyptians, there have been a number of breaks in the chains, and restarts. The "brutal ratchet" is very appropriate. The burning of the Great Library of Alexandria was one such break. Much of the contents of that library are still lost to us. We can thank the Persians for a lot of the recovery of ancient Greek knowledge.
There are some interesting documentaries on the Minoans and their advanced indoor plumbing and waste management. https://ancientengrtech.wisc.edu/gr...r System Technology,(Aitken humanities, 2021).
They were also known to have built multi-storied houses well before the rest of the Greek world. There is some speculation that they were the actual people of Plato's Atlantis, although I think the description of their location doesn't agree with the island's actual position.
Then, consider the description of the Atlantians having air travel. What would the technology advancement need to be to discover lighter-than-air hotair ballooning? How long have humans known you can launch a candle in the air by tying it under a lightweight bag? People have watched the skies for millenia with the idea that we might be able to fly.
-Will
There are some interesting documentaries on the Minoans and their advanced indoor plumbing and waste management. https://ancientengrtech.wisc.edu/gr...r System Technology,(Aitken humanities, 2021).
They were also known to have built multi-storied houses well before the rest of the Greek world. There is some speculation that they were the actual people of Plato's Atlantis, although I think the description of their location doesn't agree with the island's actual position.
Then, consider the description of the Atlantians having air travel. What would the technology advancement need to be to discover lighter-than-air hotair ballooning? How long have humans known you can launch a candle in the air by tying it under a lightweight bag? People have watched the skies for millenia with the idea that we might be able to fly.
-Will
The only reference we have to Atlantis is in the Timaeus and Critias dialogues written by Plato. It seems unlikely he intended those works to be read as historical accounts, but that hasn't stopped people from doing so. It would help if there were any other reference elsewhere to Atlantis, but as far as I'm aware, there aren't.
Combine that with the fact that some of the dialogs Plato wrote were between people who lived, but not always at the same time. While it has been proven that Homer's Troy really did exist, and it was likely that they had a war with the Akkadians, You are right, there's plenty about Plato that points to fiction.
-Will
Absolutely. The more research is done, the more we discover about ancient civilizations that have had very advanced technologies for their time. There's always the knowledge gap of how certain things could have been built like the Egyptian pyramids, for instance, which always feels like magic to us because we don't know the hows. The Ancient Romans, Greeks, and even Mayans all had their own equivalent of an industrial revolution. I remember seeing a documentary about some very detailed gears mechanisms that been discovered at the bottom of the ocean near Greece that was presumed to have been part of an antikythera mechanism. Seeing stuff like that makes me feel so small upon realizing that yes, we're far from the only civilization that grew to be technically proficient. And the cycle will continue.
The Lebombo Bone, Oldest Known Mathematical Artifact
35000 BCE
Permalink
Image Source: www.researchgate.net
Lebombo bone on top; Ishango bone below.
The Lebombo bone
, the oldest known mathematical artifact, is a tally stick with 29 distinct notches that were deliberately cut into a baboon's fibula. It was discovered within the Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains of Swaziland.The Lebombo bone resembles the calendar sticks still used by Bushmen
in Namibia.https://math.buffalo.edu/mad/Ancient-Africa/ishango
prime numbers or menstral calendar | |
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The most interesting, of a large number of tools discovered in 1960 at Ishango, is a bone tool handle called the Ishango Bone (now located on the 19th floor of the Royal Institute for Natural Sciences of Belgium in Brussels, and can only be seen on special demand). At one end of the Ishango Bone is a piece of quartz for writing, and the bone has a series of notches carved in groups (shown below). It was first thought these notches were some kind of tally marks as found to record counts all over the world. However, the Ishango bone appears to be much more than a simple tally. The markings on rows (a) and (b) each add to 60. Row (b) contains the prime numbers between 10 and 20. Row (a) is quite consistent with a numeration system based on 10, since the notches are grouped as 20 + 1, 20 - 1, 10 + 1, and 10 - 1. Finally, row (c) seems to illustrate for the method of duplication (multiplication by 2) used more recently in Egyptian multiplication. Recent studies with microscopes illustrate more markings and it is now understood the bone is also a lunar phase counter. Who but a woman keeping track of her cycles would need a lunar calendar? Were women our first mathematicians?-Will |
Some random thoughts stimulated by the last few posts.
Regarding ancient mankind having been advanced but not to the current level.
Perhaps previous advanced civilizations based their tech on a different understanding and application of the known (either to us or to them) “laws” of physics than what we have today, and if so, would we even recognize it for what it is/was if we found the evidence for it? To put it another way, what if such an ancient civilization, otherwise lost to history, was actually more advanced than we are, would we be able to “reverse engineer” its technological artifacts and understand what we’re looking at, or would we dismiss it as the superstitious magic of a “primitive mindset”?
Regarding ballooning and lighter-than-air craft.
Candle powered paper “Sky lanterns” have been used in various places around the world for thousands of years, and yet we are expected to believe that in all that time no one ever said, “gee I wonder how much weight I could lift if I just made a bigger one?”
There is some evidence that the people who drew the Nazca lines did so (or could have done so) with the aid of hot air balloons.
Regarding Atlantis.
If by this we mean a catch-all term for a worldwide prehistoric civilization pre-dating Egypt and Sumer, and which was much more advanced than anything we so far have evidence for in known history, then this is one thing. But if we are talking about Plato’s Atlantis, then this is another thing entirely. Best to keep the two separated in discussions like this.
Plato based his Atlantis dialogs on multiple sources, some known, and some unknown. Plato himself tells us his tale originally came from Egypt via Solon, but Herodotus is also another source we know he used, and there are clues that there was a Carthaginian influence as well. It seems that in the broad parameters Plato believed he was describing a real people and place of great antiquity, but in the detailed particulars, he was drawing on more contemporaneous historical sources.
Regarding ancient mankind having been advanced but not to the current level.
Perhaps previous advanced civilizations based their tech on a different understanding and application of the known (either to us or to them) “laws” of physics than what we have today, and if so, would we even recognize it for what it is/was if we found the evidence for it? To put it another way, what if such an ancient civilization, otherwise lost to history, was actually more advanced than we are, would we be able to “reverse engineer” its technological artifacts and understand what we’re looking at, or would we dismiss it as the superstitious magic of a “primitive mindset”?
Regarding ballooning and lighter-than-air craft.
Candle powered paper “Sky lanterns” have been used in various places around the world for thousands of years, and yet we are expected to believe that in all that time no one ever said, “gee I wonder how much weight I could lift if I just made a bigger one?”
There is some evidence that the people who drew the Nazca lines did so (or could have done so) with the aid of hot air balloons.
Regarding Atlantis.
If by this we mean a catch-all term for a worldwide prehistoric civilization pre-dating Egypt and Sumer, and which was much more advanced than anything we so far have evidence for in known history, then this is one thing. But if we are talking about Plato’s Atlantis, then this is another thing entirely. Best to keep the two separated in discussions like this.
Plato based his Atlantis dialogs on multiple sources, some known, and some unknown. Plato himself tells us his tale originally came from Egypt via Solon, but Herodotus is also another source we know he used, and there are clues that there was a Carthaginian influence as well. It seems that in the broad parameters Plato believed he was describing a real people and place of great antiquity, but in the detailed particulars, he was drawing on more contemporaneous historical sources.
Someone made a version of the Antikythera in my favourite medium.....
Yeah, those are probably some of the more fascinating aspects to all this. It's impossible to know for sure, but for those to have come up with certain aspects there would have at least been observations to at least form some rudimentary understanding, even if it may have been limited in scope.
It's kind of fun to imagine we would be in a similar situation to Clarke's description of technology being indescribable from magic. I don't know if we'd be able to 'reverse engineer' it, as I feel like we'd first have to understand the circumstances that led to the development and their thought process. We can only hope to dig up more details that further our understanding.
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