I love how often "we have no idea how they did it!" and "they couldn't possibly do something this sophisticated!" turns into "we know how, when, where they got the materials and the name of the project foreman" when you just ask an archeologist.
Even when archaeologists don’t have that level of detail, they can still confidently tell you that people don’t really change. If we can imagine something now, they could most likely imagine the same thing a thousand years ago.
For example, you know what’s an incredibly common thing to find on a dig? Dildos. Phallic stuff is everywhere, and when you find a well-polished, life-sized clay dick, it’s pretty clear what it was used for. The Greeks had devices that were essentially computers that could predict celestial movements. Running water and indoor plumbing was relatively common in the ancient world.
We’re so egotistical to think that humans in the past were somehow incapable of thinking, planning, or building at our level. And we convince ourselves that we’re better than them because we have all this fancy stuff No, their brains were just as complex and capable, they just didn’t have access to the same kinds of tools that we do.
For example, you know what’s an incredibly common thing to find on a dig? Dildos. Phallic stuff is everywhere, and when you find a well-polished, life-sized clay dick, it’s pretty clear what it was used for
I'm just going to imagine that they were using it to slap politicians in the face with dildos. Because something about roman senators getting slapped with a clay horsecock makes me laugh.
clay horsecock
i now wonder how long the horsecock is best cock meme has been around for lmao.
God i fucking hate the internet sometimes...
You know that they've found dicks scrawled on bathroom stalls in pompei, in basically the same style we still scrawl dicks on bathroom stalls.
Also, the your-mom jokes, yelp-esque reviews, and yelp-esque reviews of your mom.
Yeah. we've grown a lot as species. And also, haven't grown at all.
Also, the senator's name was Gregg Abotticus.
humans are as humans do. Nothing will be as timeless as dick jokes and fucking someone elses mom.
I love the ingenious solutions for ancient under floor heating.
Tbf a lot of things that people did by hand in the past would be unthinkable for a lot of modern people as to how to achieve it without CAD etc.
This is so true, mostly because we are spoiled by growing up with modern tools. We are many generations of tools separated from our roots. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.
On the other hand, if an EMP took out the grid and CAD disappeared, you can be damn sure engineers amongst us would be bashing rocks together and figure a lot of it out pretty quickly.
We will brute force anything as a species if we need to, we just mostly don't need to at the moment, and time is money.
i find it weird that people are latching onto the concept of it being like racist or xenophobic, and there's definitely room to discuss that about it. But i can't help but feel like we're talking about a dumbass with a netflix show, shouldn't we apply occam's razor here?
I feel like the obvious answer here is that bro is a dumbass, made up a conspiracy, and is using it to make money. Granted i also don't know much about his history, maybe he does a little racism in his spare time idk.
Graham Hancock is a racist grifter who definitely knows he's full of shit, is that what you mean?
@BertramDitore @Hegar
Running water and indoor plumbing was relatively common in the ancient world.
really ?
In 1920, only *** 1% of US homes** had indoor plumbing
https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2004/data/papers/SS04_Panel1_Paper17.pdf
Yeah, that has more to do with American social issues and lack of government support for the general population. Water engineering is expensive no matter where or when you are, and America is huuuge.
Plumbing was common in the ancient world in the Near East, Middle East, Mediterranean (Greece and Rome), and really wherever there were people. Keep in mind if you ask two different archaeologists, you'll get two slightly different answers, but it's pretty common knowledge that running water is not a modern invention.
Some sources (only a quick search, I don't have access to all the academic journals where you'd find the good stuff):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7004096/
https://ancientengrtech.wisc.edu/greece-overview/water-systems/
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/roman-aqueducts/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_technology
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1506/ <--this one is really cool, the Qanats are still fully functional today
Edit: fixed links
My favourite example:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/aug/chinas-oldest-water-pipes-were-communal-effort
A system of ancient ceramic water pipes, the oldest ever unearthed in China, shows that neolithic people were capable of complex engineering feats without the need for a centralised state authority, finds a new study by UCL researchers.
this would be residential, if we're just talking "indoor plumbing" than i would assume it doesn't have to include residential spaces, and probably applies to things like public baths, and bathrooms/latrines or whatever for example.
People found the pyramid building manual quite recently. At the turn of the century, it was still a mystery.
Normal people don't keep up with stuff that recent.
I get the same reaction from my fellow Americans when i tell them I walk my groceries home so I'm not surprised
My cousin couldn't understand how I bought groceries after I sold my car. After telling him I walked three blocks to the store he asked how I bought groceries in winter. I told him I put on a coat and boots and walk three blocks to the store.
One of my carless kin! There are dozens of us!! The number of times people have assumed I can't go somewhere "because it's raining" and I'm just like, I have a jacket and an umbrella! But what if you're biking?? Um, I have a jacket, a backpack cover and leggings and sometimes... if I'm just heading home to a hot shower and a change of clothes, I just get soaking wet! Like absolutely sodden! NBD! And if I'm heading somewhere without the option of a change of clothes, I bus there and that leads to a whole other issue of "But that must take ssooo long!?!" Yeah sure, a bit longer, but I can relax, pop on some headphones, set google maps to tell me when I'm near my stop, watch/listen to something and let the driver worry about the driving!
I live two blocks from my local market, I understand you.
Also, they don't understand that giving me a bag for milk is not worth it, milk has a handle.
No, it comes in a plastic lined cardboard box with a screw on lid 😛
Omg I can't believe I'm about to do this but...
^This
It actually pisses me off to no end when people put their plastic jug of milk into a plastic bag. Like, the jug is heavy enough that the bag will never hold it, just fucking carry it like a normal person
Change my pitch up
Stack some bricks up!
i wasn't expecting prodigy here.
In other news, banger song, go listen to it (smack my bitch up for those wondering)
Literally first thing that came to mind
I know it's a meme but can somebody set me straight? I swear I read somewhere that this narrative started with the research community saying, essentially, "we know a number of ways in which they might have achieved this feat but we aren't sure which one they used," but the entertainment/conspiracy communities heard "there is no explanation for how these people were able to achieve this feat."
It started with "we have no idea how they did it". Then over time it morphed into "we have several hypotheses but don't know if it any of those is realistic". The current state of things is still there regarding the construction technique itself.
In the meantime the village where construction workers lived has been found. Now we know the profile or people who built the pyramids, how they lived and what they ate. Even some details about work organization.
All of this still didn't propagate into the popular culture which is still stuck in the 1980s regarding pyramid knowledge.
i would really appreciate it if a stats/math nerd would put together a short piece on how "statistically it only makes sense if the Egyptians built a pyramid, this is the most logical and likely outcome"
i feel like you could argue that statistically, shapes that are to be built by humans, will inevitably approach the shape of a pyramid.
I'm too lazy and incompetent at statistics to do the math, but survivorship bias is very much relevant here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
Turns out, if you build something that isn't a bunch of stones in an organized stack, it won't last thousands of years like the organized stone stacks.
Take a handful of sand. Turn your first perpendicular to the ground and let it fall slowly. What shape does it form? It's one of the most stable shapes you can make.
A cone?
A pyramid is just a cone with a square base.
It's more due to engineering. Materials have limited strength. Stone has fairly good compressive strength, but it'll still crack if you put too much weight on it. If you use your stone to make a tower, it won't get very high before it topples over. If you instead build a pyramid, the weight of the stone on top is dispersed across several stones below it and those stones disperse their weight to multiple stones and so on down to the base, letting you build far taller.
The same thing with things like Stonehenge. I liked the theory that said these types of constructions are the result of the prehistoric version of Burning Man, where they built it just because they could as an art installation.
i got into an argument on tiktok with someone who insisted that no ancient civilization could build the pyramids. i asked them if they knew what tools were and they clapped back with "what tools did they have back then?" mf never heard of simple machines
"but how did they make the lines so straight???!!!"
Mf never pulled on a piece of string.
There's some guy on YouTube who was showing how to lift boulders and logs by himself using only simple levers and inclines. It's been a while since I watched it, but if I remember right he moves a rock the size of a car 100 yards and lifts it a few feet into the air.
He does this with tree branches, rope, and scrap wood lol
I refuse to believe medieval people could build cathedrals. They lacked modern tools for such precise masonry and glasswork.
Well, they were modern at the time.
aliens don't like white people
Okay but if they really built a hydraulic lift elevator that’s so cool
They also gain approval from the Royal Society of Putting Things On Top Of Other Things.
Morticia Adams lookin fly
she might be but hard to tell from this angle
Everyone, or just the people who would call in to coast to coast am?
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
