I saw the drilling bit on that page, but it doesn't really correlate with the stuff found at Giza. Apart from perfectly circular holes drilled into the limestone (some of which have marks where the 'core drill' changed direction slightly), there were granite jugs found where the inside has been hollowed out with incredible precision. I'm not having it that it just took a bit of time with a lump of flint, not am I convinced they could drill holes with such accuracy using bronze bits. I've not seen any text from historians claiming the holes or the pots were from a later date, so it can only suggest that a better technology was in place in 2500bc, or the archaeologists have mis-dated the whole site. There, I've said it.
This is a top, top thread - hugely entertaining. It's tempting to believe that mankind has just got cleverer and cleverer over the millennia, but maybe that just isn't so. After all, Roman society (hot baths, underfloor heating, aqueducts, huge public constructions, politics, open debate etc etc) was far more advanced than most of the stuff that followed it for almost the next 1'000 years. I visited Oxford Uni once and it was explained that students had to learn in each of (I think it was) 7 different bits of the university (this may have something to do with the Radcliffe Camera - it may not). They had to spend several years doing Greek, then Latin, then whatever it was. The intellectual achievement was enormous. We scoff at people sacrificing to a jackal-headed deity, or worshipping a soap-opera cast of assorted gods and goddesses, but even now, in our enlightened times, there is a war going on with people who are into beheading other people because they think it serves the cause of their non-existent sky god. An atheist president of the US is completely unthinkable. So how bright as a society are we? Suppose electricity hadn't been invented (or discovered if you prefer) where would we be now? We've only really had it for a little over 200 years. So have we just suddenly become extremely capable, or were people in bygone times every bit as resourceful and bright? You'd rather think the latter if you study the ancient Greeks, Romans et al.
Figaro, I am beginning to think you have a bloody great big stone in your back garden and are trying to move it on the cheap. Get a hammer and a chisel and make a pyramid.
I do have a big stone in my garden as it happens, but I don't want to move it. And if I did want to move it I'd know better than to use levers and sodding ropes...
And, on behalf of the British Academy, I am proud to announce the 2014 Comedy Newcomer Award goes to: Fig For his thread - The Serious Thread - Archaeology
Okay, lets move this on. The Moon Landings, real of fake. All done with the processing powers of a calculator. Figgy?
One day we might well land on the moon, but how the hell did they get those huge Kin stones up there!!!
Graham Hancock has already seen the face of a sphinx on the moon. And a pyramid. I kid you not. Which is proof enough for me I think. Personally I'm not interested in the moon, not until the first kebab wagon gets there. Meanwhile I'll be searching for Imhotep's mummy...
But there's no evidence to suggest the pyramids are tombs, yet the historians are spouting it as gospel.
