• GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    It’s fair to imagine the challenges a building team would face 2k plus years ago.

    Like in this example, building levers that are strong enough to lift the load. I bet they broke a bunch of stuff.

    But eventually they figured it out, via trial and error. Levers, ramps, etc. They probably couldn’t describe why those things were inherently the best way, but more approached from the “we tried 9 other ways and they suck. This is the best way.”

    Next, the phrase “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is relevant here, but in a backwards way.

    Since we struggle to imagine what it would take for an ancient society to master the techniques to build these things, we therefore begin to grasp for unrealistic conclusions (magic…read…aliens).

    Same goes for Europeans building cathedrals and stuff, the trick is the history, the methods and the results were more documented and understood.

    There are some racism concerns that I think go beyond and around what I’ve discussed, which is more abstract. I’m not discounting the other topics, just not covering them here.

    • YoorWeb@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      Egyptians didn’t just decide “hey, let’s build a pyramid”. Mastabas were first, the shape of a Pyramid evolved later.

      Not to mention that there’s a few faulty pyramids (e.g. Bent Pyramid which were finished quickly or all together abandoned before completion.

      Merer forgot to mention aliens in his diary too.

      But hey, aliens did it. They couldn’t just land on Earth. Their ships were designed to land on a Pyramid because that’s how intelligent race would build their spaceships. Don’t question it, just trust the specialists (who wrote books!).

      Anyway, for anyone interested in Ancient Egypt, the best thing out there (I think) are Bob Briers lectures also available on Audible.

      • Meowoem@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        I like the theories about them being ancient power stations or radio devices, using the water channels and gold cap stone to create enough pd to be useful in occult practices. It doesn’t have to be aliens that helped make them but I think there’s something the really resonates with the idea of aliens coming down and teaching ancient people how to make super complex and beautiful machines to synthesize small amounts of potent narcotics. Like none of the other reasons aliens would come make much sense but a tiktokable prank like that really does.

        Imagine how fascinating it would be if we find loads of old alien stuff on Mars with like little model pyramids and pictures of them with the pharaoh. Or if when we meet aliens and have first contact they got us up with galactic tiktok and people are reposting all the old videos of pranks aliens have pulled on earth over the years.

        Yeah they were probably just the biggest coolest looking thing that knew how to make so everyone wanted one, yeah they were probably just dragging rocks up sandy inclones and using water filled counter weights… but we don’t know aliens weren’t there so I’m going to enjoy being open to that possibility.

  • li10@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    For some reason people seem to think they’re fundamentally smarter than people were back then.

    Yeah, you may have technically had a better education, but you’re not inherently more intelligent than the average person back then, and a genius from that time is still miles ahead of you.

  • RandomVideos@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    A couple years ago my chemistry teacher told my class that the Egyptians had really advanced technology (technology even more advanced than our own) thousands of years ago but it all got lost because they started a nuclear war

    Edit: she told us that the evidence was that there were smartphone paintings