Ancient Aliens

Evidence of back strain can be seen in many skeletons from Egypt. Obviously this was caused by the constant need to bow before the overlords, but bowing beats the other possibilities of non-compliance.

Do you mean alien overlords?

I think this link http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/25067/Aging-Engineers? has more relevance to this conversation as any of the nonsense I have been putting forth.

rofl

Alrighy then, here is some fun stuff for those with no concrete grip on reality.

You're gonna love this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwCaZaSon9A&feature=kp

Stonking hilarious ! It goes at a million miles a minute, so I'll have to savour that later. Ta !

I don't put this forward as a definitive solution, but as a possible solution that is more plausible than Aliens.

If you mix a bacteria called Sporosarcina Pasturii, (also known as Bacillus Pasturii and I will refer to it a BP) plus urease plus sand, leave the mix for 1 week, the result is a form of sandstone. I don't know the full details of the reaction, try a web search for "Swedish Architect Magnus Larson". He has a proposal to build a wall across the southern Sahara to prevent it expanding further south (not the "green wall" proposed by the African Union).

BP is found in soils of marshland similar to that found in the Nile Delta. Urease occurs in bacteria that is present in all soils but has higher concentrations in river washout from forested regions of the type present in the upper Nile at the time when the pyramids were built. Sand is quite common in Egypt. Egypt was reliant for it's food on the flood waters of the Nile depositing nutrient rich soil on the river banks. It is not a giant leap to suggest that they would be studying the soils to try to increase yields.

Let us assume that the Ancient Egyptians stumbled across this biochemical reaction. To make a pyramid all they would need to do is construct some shuttering, (remember finding wood for shuttering was not a problem at the time, only later after the deforestation of the Upper Nile), fill it with sand, poured in water with BP and Urease, waited a week, take the shuttering away and hay presto, one three ton block of stone. No dragging massive blocks around with sleds and hundreds of slaves, no impossibly resiliently surfaced ramps up the side of the pyramid, just some workers carrying sensible sized baskets of sand.

Why are there no records of this process. Well maybe they did not understand it, Maybe there are and we have miss interpreted them. What we now assume is a battery could well be a bacteria breeding tank. How would they display a biochemical process in hieroglyphs anyway? It would also explain why there are no records of humping big stones about.

Incidentally there are walls in South America with joints so thin you can't slide a knife in. If the same process was used there but with BP, Urease and sand stacked in bags woven from banana sized leaves, those block shapes and fits can be fully explained.

And striations in the rocks in the pyramids tell us exactly which quarry they came from. I put up links about that.... They did not use Sporosarcina Pasturii to build pyramids. They dragged the blocks up ramps. Simple as that. Too bad...SP would have been a great idea! No doubt something similar made the quarries in the first place, but the quarries were not made by Egyptian Alchemists using sugar water.

The sand stuff only works with calcium based sand BTW, and is being used extensively in the US (and being investigated by the NRC) to consolidate "gravel" roads. It can also fix cracked marble statues and limestone monuments. It is a seriously powerful engineering tool, which has been overlooked far too much.

Personally, I like it. Works quick (though not as quick as concrete), no need for burnt cement, and makes a not so bad concrete.

Well, that certainly explains what I found in the back of my fridge when I cleaned it out this past weekend: ethnic rock (not a musical genre).

Hey Ron, I did not mean to imply you had no grip on reality. I hope you enjoyed the video. The animation is a hoot and the narrator should have worked for Disney.

For me personally, this does a fine job of summing it up.

"The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space."
― Carl Sagan

The problem I have with possible scenarios building pyramids is; the use of rollers and wheels. I have not been in Egypt, so my impression of Egypt is; loose sand everywhere. Sand is not a surface that can support rollers or wheels. They would just sink into the sand. I don't know how much wood was available back then. There doesn't seem to be much in evidence today. Many scientists have worked on the problem for a long time and haven't come up with a solution. I don't expect anyone on this forum to really have the answer, but for lack of a truly good explanation, the alien theory is just as good as any other. You can reject alien theory all you want, but just because you haven't seen an alien in person, that doesn't rule out aliens 100%. You can say the same thing of God. Just because you haven't seen God, doesn't mean He doesn't exist.

Look at Yusuf's posts #28 and #97. Rocks and bricks were the surfaces that they used, and there were grooves left in them. Go back an look at the links provided by Andy Germanyy in post #30.

I agree that you cannot rule out alien technology 100%. But you have to have SOME evidence of aliens before you decide they were involved. Just like you have to have SOME evidence that the Egyptians hauled their stones on roads or used ropes.

I agree with you about God. I have never seen God, but I have seen plenty of evidence that the universe is far more strange than even quantum physics can account for, and that some kind of divine intervention happens every day on a very local, very private level. But before I believe in any particular miracle, I still need to see evidence that God was involved. Lots of charlatans out there.

That's a good observation. The 'it must be aliens' argument and the 'it must be god' argument do follow the same formula. It does seem less than clear though, that pointing out the connection is more likely to improve the standing of alien intervention or instigate new questions about divine intervention.

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It is important to note that the question of the existence of aliens is quite different than that of alien intervention in specific events. While alien existence cannot be ruled out, their intervention or participation in specific events can be ascertained with far greater certainty.

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The alien theory is not 'just as good as any other'. Very few of the other theories are of the same level of 'good' as any other theory.

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Bingo.

Add to that, any intervention by a superior race is bound to cause social havoc with the inferior race. We have proven that time and time again on our own planet.

It seems highly unlikely that any beings that happened upon us would interact with us in any way knowing the social outcomes would almost assuredly be a disaster.

Then there is the issue of biological cross contamination (which goes both ways).

I would have to question that any civilization advanced enough to cross the gulfs of space would consider our current civilization advanced enough for contact, let alone one that is 5,000 years our inferior. Our current intellects are hardly more than those of the beasts compared to those that have already mastered space and time.

"Add to that, any intervention by a superior race is bound to cause social havoc with the inferior race. We have proven that time and time again on our own planet."

I'm reminded of a short story in an issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, from about a year ago. I won't go into the details of the plot, (it was an 'undocumented history' story, covering things that happened but were never 'officially' recorded) but the point I'm getting at is based on a conversation in that story between Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain, discussing how the various 'Indians' coped with contact by a 'superior' culture.

In the Americas, the Indians suffered and diminished in the face of European Might and Culture (before the Colonies became their own country, but to the American Indians, it was 'same stuff, different rag-on-a-stick'), but the East Indians thrived and grew under Imperial Rule, until they were strong enough and 'civilized' enough to become full productive members of the Empire (and later the Commonwealth, but again, 'Same King/Queen, different name for the local boss').

"I would have to question that any civilization advanced enough to cross the gulfs of space would consider our current civilization advanced enough for contact, let alone one that is 5,000 years our inferior. Our current intellects are hardly more than those of the beasts compared to those that have already mastered space and time."

Shift the spacial and temporal scales down a little, to 'advanced enough to cross the gulfs of open sea' and 'let alone one that is 2,000 years our inferior' and you get the Europe of the Colonial era.

If and when (I'm leaning towards 'when') we encounter an extraterrestrial intelligence, how we react and what will happen to us pretty much depends on who's Indians we are, Twain's or Kipling's. Will we embrace and adapt, or will we suffer and diminish?

Great reply.

Adapt or die , I think.

Exactly:

American Indians: didn't adapt, and (as a collection of nations that ruled the continent) died.

East Indians: adapted, and retained their culture and identity, becoming an equal to the 'invaders.'

"Let alone one that 5000 years our inferior"

This, being a forum of Engineers, can be forgiven for just a smidgen of arrogance...

Why were the ancient people inferior ? Did not genatalia exist before then ? And limbs, and brains? We are still faffing about, trying to understand our immediate surroundings 5000 years later, and the only truly measurable progress we have made has been in our ability to attack and kill each other, all the while pontificating about the existence and the word of God, which understanding has also been accredited to 'inferior' past- people. (Really, if you lived your whole life in the desert, why would you feel the need to invent a vacuum cleaner ? On the other hand, they did manage to capture and tame camels, and somehow (yet beyond us), build those pesky pyramids!!

ps don't try driving a car in Cairo traffic.......we are just not worthy enough! Only the spawn of the pyramid people can master the art!

GA. Thanks for a well-considered response. Yes I do own a slide rule, and I believe I have a log book in my never-to-be-referenced-again box files, not seen since I got my first HP scientific calculator (early eighties).

Nevertheless, I saw and touched stonework in Egypt that defies belief. Mating surfaces on blocks > 2m^3 that you can't fit a piece of paper between, and no cracks of light either. Even if there was a requirement for a draught-free fit, some mortar, wax or similar sealant could have been used. Note that this is not common sandstone I refer to; but really hard stuff, similar to granite.

"Even if there was a requirement for a draught-free fit, some mortar, wax or similar sealant could have been used. Note that this is not common sandstone I refer to; but really hard stuff, similar to granite."

And if you want a really smooth, flat surface, what do you do? Mill it, grind it, polish it. The basic carpentry plane is designed to take the high spots off a work, smoothing and leveling it by reducing the surface to that of the lowest point.

If you can make a straight line, you can make a jig or straightedge with a straight line, and once you have that reference, you can grind/polish a stone down to that straight line. Granite is a very hard rock, however, if you're mining granite, you also have the material to polish it with: granite 'sand/dust/chips' from the quarry you got the granite from. It it a hard, laborious process to smooth granite like that without modern machines? You bet. Nobody said it was easy to do all this, that's why a new pharoh would as his first act, commission his pyramid tomb, hoping he'd live long enough for it to be finished in time for him to be buried in it.

There's an old Egyptian saying (or at least it sounds like it SHOULD be from there): "Nothing is impossible if you have a dream, dedication, and a boatload of slaves to do the heavy lifting."

I am disturbed that this subject has so many posts on this site!

The aliens must be rigging things behind the scenes.