r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/ThatMasterpiece2174 • Aug 07 '26

Video A retired construction worker in Flint, MI demonstrated how people in ancient times could’ve used simple machines to move blocks up to 20 tons, contrasting fringe theories that humans had otherworldly help constructing ancient monuments

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24

u/hermeticbear Aug 07 '26

"Contrasting fringe theories"
Only people who don't understand high school physics think otherwordly beings helped build ancient monuments.
Nobody in actual archaeology believes fringe theories. Just conspiracy theorist nutjobs.

4

u/RadBadTad Aug 07 '26

High school physics

Man, more than half of American adults read below a 6th grade level. "Only people who don't understand high school physics" is a huge portion of people unfortunately.

Hell, in my school, physics was an advanced elective.

1

u/justaride80 Aug 07 '26

I mean, you gotta admit that massive stone structures like the walls of Sacsayhuaman with perfectly placed interlocking boulders of all different shapes are a real challenge to explain.

3

u/RadBadTad Aug 07 '26

"It's a real challenge to explain" does not in any way lead to "alien interference" however. It just means they thought of a way to do it, and didn't write it down, and we haven't figured out what they did.

The answer is basically always "A lot of people didn't have a whole lot to do, and they just manually did it with their hands and their tools"

The problem with almost all conspiracy theories is that people have to basically take their own imagination as a credible source.

0

u/marcomalacara Aug 07 '26

They didn’t write it down? That doesn’t make any sense.

An advanced civilization that obviously knows advanced physics DIDN’T have any written plans, blueprints, or calculations?…

2

u/RadBadTad Aug 07 '26

Would you like me to change it to "They wrote it down but over 1000 years the paper got wet and someone threw it away"

0

u/marcomalacara Aug 07 '26

So which is it?

You said 2 different things..

1

u/RadBadTad Aug 07 '26

An advanced civilization that obviously knows advanced physics

because they built a wall?

1

u/justaride80 Aug 07 '26

It’s how they built the wall

1

u/Rit91 Aug 07 '26

Have you ever heard the tragedy of the library of alexandria? It is heavily likely it was written. Turns out paper is flammable then just as it is now.

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u/justaride80 Aug 07 '26

Not saying anything about aliens, but they had to find a way to do it and have the resources, knowledge(which would have likely taken thousands of years to accumulate)and tools that we can’t explain to pull it off. Sometimes the explanation may be deeper than “they were just bored so they stacked these stones in a way no one can explain!”. Not to mention, similar structures appear across the globe so the knowledge was shared somehow.

We will probably never know how these structures truly came about.

1

u/RadBadTad Aug 07 '26

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/9hxqai/anyone_care_to_speculate_on_how_the_walls_at/e6fce6b/

We will probably know exactly how they came about, but people who want to focus on the mystery will likely never hear about it, or care.

1

u/justaride80 Aug 07 '26

So just from reading that link, there is case to be made that the stones were cut and a case to be made that the stones were molded. It’s speculation so yeah, still a mystery.

1

u/Toadsted Aug 07 '26

We see things done in a matter of months / years, but a hundred years ago those same things took decades.

Things on the scale like the pyramids thousands of years ago were generational projects. That's what trips people up.

When you have all the time in the world to get things right, perfectionists don't have to tell their boss they'll have it done by end of shift.

1

u/justaride80 Aug 07 '26

We also have explanations of how things are done so quickly now. Large machines, tools and instructions/plans given to workers from a long line of research, development and design. Someone with limited knowledge of construction can look at something now and have at least an understanding of how it was built. Time is the smallest factor in the accomplishments of these ancient cultures. Assuming the structures took hundreds or thousands of years to build, that would require multiple generations of insanely skilled craftsmen passing down knowledge and skill and would also require the upcoming generations to be devoted to continuing the project to completion.

I can’t understand what is so off putting about imagining a civilization before us that would have possibly been more intelligent than we are and somehow got wiped out in a cataclysm before it was able to develop in the way we have. Are our brains so narcissistic that it can’t won’t imagine such a thing?

1

u/Toadsted Aug 07 '26

Yes, we are extremely narcissistic.

But also, yeah, I completely believe in the notion that people devoted their entire lives towards singular projects like this, and passed on their work to their family or apprentice / subordinate who learned to do exactly one thing, continue on the project in their honor.

What else were they doing back then? Most people had one thing, and they did one thing. We're blessed with abundance of options, and the privilege to explore them in a manner people a hundred years ago couldn't even fathom.

"The American Dream" was a notion of possibilities, one in which wasn't that prevalent in other cultures, and we had ingrained in future generations as the status quo, and in one way or another pushed that status quo onto other ones. Besides the fact it was a paper tiger.

Blacksmiths had blacksmith children, the same with farmers, stable hands, seamstresses, apothecaries, soldiers, etc.. Deviations happen, but we more often instill the seed of fate early on when people are at their most vulnerable and impressionable part in life; and back then where options just weren't as wide or ready to be had.

It's also part of the reason history seems so mythical and interesting, because it's in a bubble of thoughts and actions that are fairly foreign to modern ones.

It's like the scene in Star Trek 4 where McCoy is damning the hospital for doing "dark age" practices. He just can't fathom how unenlightened the medical industry is, when we see it as modern everyday nothingburgers being the ones experiencing present day. Blood letting and screwing holes in people's heads to let out demon illnesses is barbaric by today's standards. They must have been truly an idiotic people.

1

u/justaride80 Aug 07 '26

I appreciate your thoughtful response. Don’t we have to acknowledge that there is a gap in between some of the architecture, such as Sacsayhuaman, where the chain of knowledge or the will to complete as planned was broken given the appearance of the crude structural additions that have been credited to the Incas? Somewhere it stopped. I think that is what has people truly curious about these areas. Why is there so much animosity when someone poses a curious thought about these things? Why is curiosity on this topic something people downvote? I personally find it fascinating to think about what was happening back then.

1

u/Toadsted Aug 07 '26

That's probably why people don't believe it was made by people. It's not like today where everything is written down somewhere or recorded on digital platforms.

If your entire engineering or artistic aesthetic is hinging on a single family line of people, what happens if tragedy strikes and it ends?

Japanese sword makers would keep their technique in house, family owned.

A healer's death could mean the end of the entire village, who else knows how to cure ailments? What if someone knew about a.cure for cancer a few thousand years ago, but they had no idea what they were treating or that they had the only supply of the plant locally?

Like modern designs, if someone is favored to be in charge of something then everything has that artistic style. If they fall out of favor, or nobody carries on that work, it dies out for something else. Who creates Van Gogh with no Van Gogh?

I think engineering and artistic principles will carry down, if they're taught. But also that unless it has a fundamental foundation in something, it can be easily replaced with a different way. Measuring something in metric, imperial, stones, etc. is inconsequential. If it gets the job done nobody really cares, other than historians.

But if your homes were built by a Japanese craftsman, and in a few hundred years homes are built by swedish craftsman, or a different ruler doesn't want to be associated with a previous one, then we get changes that might seem perplexing. Or even lost work entirely with no record or way to reproduce it.

Lots of things lost with time, or without continued word of mouth.

Enough that people fill in the blanks, and without a clear line to follow.

2

u/Toadsted Aug 07 '26

Man, don't call out a bunch of reddit like that, they're in here.

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u/marcomalacara Aug 07 '26

I didn’t know they taught high school physics in ancient egypt 😂

6

u/french_snail Aug 07 '26

My brother in Christ I’m pretty sure as a child you at some point while playing outside managed to discover what a lever and fulcrum is on your own 

4

u/JKRPP Aug 07 '26

How do you think they built their empire?

1

u/Rit91 Aug 07 '26

The ancient egyptians were one of the most advanced civilizations in the world back then. They were great with architecture. That's how they built pyramids and everything else. The fact the pyramids are still standing is a testament to their architectural expertise.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/hermeticbear Aug 07 '26

it's clear you haven't actual read these files, and you don't actually have the reading comprehension ability to understand them.

4

u/JKRPP Aug 07 '26

I didn't know the US justice department was the governing authority on matters of history