This is just 'ancient astronaut' nonsense. If you gave modern people some incentive to move big stones around without heavy machinery they would figure out how to do it in a couple of months. It's just not hard to do, and people have been moving much larger pieces of stone during recorded history, so we know the techniques used perfectly well.

Lots of the obelisks in Rome are far larger than any prehistoric stones moved or worked, and we know how they did it and it's impressive. Impressive isn't the same as an unexplained mystery.

Who mentioned ancient astronauts?

Archeologists don't seem to be as blasé as you about this:

> Nothing puzzles archaeologists so much as impracticality, and although the karst topography of Baalbek demands strong foundation stones, and although one big stone is easier to move than many smaller stones, the pillars holding up the temple’s podium, van Ess says, are bigger than they need to be. In fact, Baalbek is one of a series of ancient projects that are under rigorous study by the Germans for being unnecessarily large.

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/baalbek-myth-megalit...

Many gothic cathedrals still standing also are stronger than they have to be. Reason? Building was still guesswork at the time and the ones built too weak have long collapsed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauvais_Cathedral is an edge case.

So, it may be lack of structural engineering knowledge. They also may have intended to build something bigger, but realised they ran out of time or money, or the “something bigger” collapsed, and this is a rebuild, reusing parts.

Archaeologists also aren't structural engineers, usually. So they often have quite different ways of approaching problems.

As an example of what happens when a structural engineer does some amateur archaeology, check out http://theoldexplorer.com/index.php/the-lost-secrets-of-maya...

Though it seems they're more puzzled by the "unnecessary" size of the structure rather than transportation of the slabs.

Also, somewhat ironically, the posted link mentions ancient astronauts.

I found this link to be pretty interesting read on the topic. Kind of takes the mystery out of it though : )

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/03/history-of-human-powe...

I think, the further back in history we go, the kookier things get - and that this is a positive, not a negative aspect of the experience. We in the modern age have conditioned ourselves to be subjugated to science - well, for the humans alive 20,000 years ago, cave-paintings were science. The fact that we don't understand them now, and have very strong opinions about the nature of civilisation in that period of human history, is more of the effect that time and history have on human consciousness - namely, occlusion and obfuscation. Kooky explanations for the weird and unusual artefacts we discover in the modern age are to be expected - we are as oblivious to the meaning of ancient art/science as they would be, had we a time machine, of our modern rocketry and iPhones and so on.

I think the Imperial View which tends to lead one to discount observations made beyond the lunatic fringe is less valuable than the conjecture and supposition that occurs when someone, perhaps weird and unintelligent, says to themselves "What if ...?" and then subsequently go off to investigate.

Never forget, even Newton was considered a crackpot for a period. We kill and eat our messiahs, after all, it is an ancient and provocative segment of human psyche, that we have been unable to shake the bonds of cannibalistic behaviour in our societies - sure, we're not cooking and roasting on an open fire, unless that fire is a metaphor for the modern thinker, convinced of their own righteousness.

I'm personally unconvinced that there weren't ancient civilisations with advanced technologies, yet undiscovered, which moved mountains for their own purposes.

We need only look at the deleterious effect of technology in our own generation to understand just how banal things can get, vis a vis forgotten science, and specifically technology. Perhaps the ancients did have anti-gravity capable flying machines that allowed them to build these structures - and perhaps the tech was lost in a few generations because of the deleterious effects of "planned obsolescence" at such scale. Unless someone is willing to stick their neck out and ask "What if .. there are UFO's buried under these mountains/&etc.?", we'll never really know.

Of course I understand the requirement that sense trump fiction - however I don't agree that the line is so drawn in the sands and stones of the ancients. There are many, many signs that we do not understand, and yet many clues that there is more to ancient history, and particularly civilizations beyond our comprehension, than there is 'total certainty of fact'.

Heck, even the Pentagon admits it doesn't know it all about UFO's, c'mon ..

One does not need to look at ancient civilisations for unknown technologies.

If you are somewhat interested in the history of technology, one will quickly see many examples since the mid 19th century of technologies that came into existence and are no more. Due to the way technological development flows, once a particular technology disappears, it can be difficult if not impossible to duplicate it even 20 to 30 years later.

If one reads fiction from the forties, you will find references to specific types of technology (especially in the space opera genre) that were in existence at that time and were highly advanced for that time. Yet, different types of technology have replaced those kinds in the years that followed and onto today.

There is much we do not know about how things were done in past centuries and, surprisingly, we cannot duplicate those crafts today. We don't have the required technology. Yet there are nanotechnologists who are actively studying to duplicate those century old unknown today processes.

> I'm personally unconvinced that there weren't ancient civilisations with advanced technologies, yet undiscovered, which moved mountains for their own purposes.

This idea is so old it's like beating a dead horse by now. Just the idea that we are not capable of these incredible things just goes to show how little you understand or respect human ingenuity.

> Heck, even the Pentagon admits it doesn't know it all about UFO's, c'mon ..

This didn't happen... ?

Rather, a ex-pentagon guy was recruited by an ex-pop singer guy's nonsense organization, with some nonsense claims.

This is called a PR stunt.

>"respect human"

You say tomato, I say 'contemporary hubris for/against ancient, misunderstood cultures'. I do, indeed, have a great deal of respect for human ingenuity, or I wouldn't be having this conversation with you, presumably a human, in the first place.

>PR stunt

I would say that we've been talking about PR stunts all along, no? I mean, what else could cave-paintings be?

> Perhaps the ancients did have anti-gravity capable flying machines

Anti-gravity like that is essentially impossible according to physics.

Even if you decide that you think general relativity is wrong, if a society had antigravity, we would expect to see many more signs of their technological advancement.

Unless of course you want to believe that they used some sort of magic, using say incantations instead of technology.

>Even if you decide that you think general relativity is wrong, if a society had antigravity, we would expect to see many more signs of their technological advancement.

Maybe they got the technology, and subsequently used it to leave Earth alone, eh? And maybe it was the relatives they left behind that used that as a motivation for creative/artistic expression, in the dark, back here on Earth?

I mean, this is really the point of these art-forms; open to interpretation. And frankly the notion that one ideal over the other should prevail is, perhaps, a bit ignorant?

> Maybe they got the technology, and subsequently used it to leave Earth alone, eh?

And maybe there's an invisible dragon in my garage. This is not rational thought.

> I mean, this is really the point of these art-forms

My mistake, I thought we were discussing likely possibilities for external reality. If this is just a fantasy game, carry on.

The point is, we don't know everything there is to know about propulsion. "Anti-gravity" is just a useless phrase, sure, but .. maybe its more of a "gravity-bending" technology, who knows.

That's really the point I think, is being made. We don't know everything there is to know about how the universe works. Just because ancient cultures might have left us clues to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves, doesn't mean we should not indeed check ourselves.

I mean, I'm all for the idea that we discover this kind of technology buried under an old village somewhere. Sounds kind of fun to me - you know, like .. electricity might've sounded fun and exotic at some point ..

> maybe its more of a "gravity-bending" technology, who knows.

We already have gravity bending technology: it's called mass. Gravity is caused by concentrations of energy, which have to be extremely large to generate significant gravity.

How much do you know about general relativity? Are you sure that dreaming about this kind of stuff isn't just a way to avoid learning about what we already know? If we suddenly found something buried under an old village, would you want to learn about that, or do you just want to be able to use it without understanding it?

I would want the people who understand these things to have an open mind about learning more, from such a discovery, were it to happen - and then I'd like everyone to have access to the technology so we can, like, vacation on Phobos and whatnot.

Seriously though, your point is correct. But, obviously, if there were space-faring UFO's capable of impossible speeds, then there'd have to be something behind it all that we are missing. Maybe we'll get some clues one day.

I remember seeing a video demonstration of how a single person can erect stones as in Stonehenge. Basically, you lever it up bit by bit by placing a log or b other fulcrum under the stone, off-center, and place weights on the shorter end until the other end of the stone lifts. Add a higher fulcrum on the other side, repeat until the stone is high enough to be tipped into a hole dug into the ground to hold it.

Maybe this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYQBDhkBfr0

That's probably it. The technique is a little different from my recollection, but that's memory for you.

Don't forget they had to drag them from Southern Wales. Getting them in place was just the final phenomenal feat.

It's impressive, yes. And probably we don't know exactly how it was done. But that's not the same as saying it's an unexplained mystery - we just don't know which particular methods they used, even if we know one or more ways in which it could have been done.

> And probably we don't know exactly how it was done. But that's not the same as saying it's an unexplained mystery

That is the meaning of unexplained mystery, something mysterious and unexplained.

"(W)e don't know exactly how it was done" is exactly what "unexplained mystery" means.

As opposed to explained mysteries? /s

An explained mystery would be something for which the method would be non-obvious, but nonetheless the method was known. Like a magic trick the solution of which were pubic knowledge - mysterious but explained in sources in the public domain.

So what's something where we can come up with several plausible methods, but don't have the evidence to conclusively decide which method actually was used?

Almost all of these mysteries are all easily explained by acknowledging we under estimated the abilities of ancient anatomically modern humans.

Indeed. This seems to be the most common fallacy when looking into ancient astronaut claims.

Suppose you wanted to stand a large stone on end?

How would you do it?

Just get a stout log and a bunch of men and pry up one end of the stone and shovel dirt and debris under it.

Then pry it up again and repeat.

It would take a long time but eventually you could get it standing.

So, you've a 45 ton stone to lever up, how do you move the log that would be though enough to use as a lever ... How about the fulcrum stone, how do you move that ... levers will the way down?

Dig a hole beneath the other end of the stone, it turns the ground into a fulcrum.

Which is nearly impossible in some geologies, the extreme being on rock, eg in a quarry.

They started by moving small slabs of stone and gradually moved up to bigger ones. There are thousands of years worth of pyramids sitting around the banks of the nile, and you can see the development. It's not like they started with the Pyramids at Giza, which indeed would have been an unexplainable accomplishment.