How much did ancient humans know and understand?

cladking · January 11, 2013

I've just started working on the determination of what cavemen knew and when they knew it. I already was able to deduce most of the metaphysics from a literal understanding of the sole piece of writing that survives in the ancient language, the Pyramid Texts. Now I've begun trying to decipher and deduce the science itself. The educated caveman would have known the nature of gravity, sizes of the earth and moon, orbits (probably non-mathematically), and might have had a wildly inaccurate idea of the speed of light. The typical caveman would maker fewer false statements about nature than the average college graduate.

Of course they knew a great deal more than this as most of their knowledge concerned botany, zoology etc.

I'm guessing at this point that the typical caveman was more intelligent as well. It is probable that it was the women who were primarily the scientists.

I suppose people now are so superstitious and set in their thinking that they can't even entertain such ideas. We had backward and superstitious ancestors and nothing anyone can say and no amount of evidence will overturn it. This is simply such a massive reevaluation that it will require decades and demographic changes before it is fully accepted.

cladking · January 15, 2013

!

Moderator Note

Cladking

Section on cavemen and novel interpretation of texts from the pyramids has been split off and placed in speculations.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/72157-how-much-did-ancient-humans-know-and-understand/

Thank you. I will follow and defend the thread.

I suppose the point was phrased so speculatively as to not be relevant to a thread on metaphysics. I'll try to avoid this in the future. The point was largely that a very highly advanced metaphysics can be deduced by the knowledge displayed in the only extensive writing that survives from the most ancient times; the Pyramid Texts. I realize no one understands this writing unless I do, so no one has cause to accept my interpretation. But still the fact remains that they display relatively sophisticated understanding of a few natural processes. This was the point of the last post; that this understanding would not have arisen over a brief period of time. In all likelyhood the ancient metaphysics required all of the first 40,000+ years of human advancement.

There are some extraordinarily complicated scientific concepts imbedded in the Pyramid Texts. The most complicated that can be extracted is a perfect description of the hydraulic cycle;

1140c. (he is dried) by the wind of the great Isis, together with (which) the great Isis dried (him) like Horus.

...1146a. N. is the pouring down of rain; he came forth as the coming into being of water;

1146b. for he is the Nḥb-kȝ.w-serpent with the many coils;

"Nḥb-kȝ.w-serpent" is mistranslated by Egyptologists in several ways which preclude their ability to understand. This is the "natural phenomenon" called "Nehebkau" which they mistranslate as "god". Nehebkau actually is the hydraulic process and his "coils" are the clouds. "Serpents" are simply "fluid flow" and could be very dangerous where even hydrogen sulphide could flow from the "gods" as well as the various natural and man made processes occuring to build pyramids and create primeval mounds.

Of course their knowledge didn't stop at building great pyramids and knowledge of the hydraulic cycle this is just the evidence that I am correct. Of course if "Nehebkau" meant one thing in this instance and something else elsewhere there would be no meaning and we'd be justified in the assumption it is confused language just like we use. But everywhere the term appears it is consistent with this understanding. This consideration applies to the vast majority of the terms within the work; they are consistent with a wholly different understanding than that we use in day to day life.

These are embedded so I can't show it but they also refer to rainbows as "light scatterers of the sky", "steps of light", and "sky arcs". Some of this is dependent on translation but the point stands that there is an effervescent column of water that off gasses CO2 and is adorned with rainbows. The more relevant point is that this implies they had a different way to think and speak and a very complicated language which was the metaphysics of their understanding. ...And just happened to be the basis of how they built pyramids which is how I stumbled upon it.

Edited January 15, 2013 by cladking

cladking · January 16, 2013

It seems ironic that a concept that will be seen as obvious even with our highly limited current knowledge in fifty years is seen as speculative today. This post was an attempt to make the point that great cities and great pyramids didn't suddenly arise in a vacuum of knowledge and as a result of shamans, ignorance, and superstition. People needed real world knowledge to succeed far more in ancient times than they do today. Where it failed as a post it might succeed as a thread.

The fact is that much of modern science could be deduced from observation and logic alone. This is a far more tedious means to invent knowledge but it is the direction even modern science has been heading. We might be nearing the point at which experimental science hits a roadblock and it could be the same or similar problem the ancients faced. Why else switch to logic,math, and thought experiments unless there is a problem developing experiments?

I will defend this and expound on any point if anyone is interested. I'll also defend any points in my overall thesis which is a work much longer in process. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/72011-epistemology-science-and-technology/

There is good reason to believe that the ancients were scientists. Imhotep had a title that could be translated as "Chief of Observers". Each of the pyramids employed a couple of "Prophets" whose job was to make predictions about best practices. All of the evidence for the builders of the great pyramids indicate these people were highly trained and sophisticated. They had good health care that even included brain surgery (a few appear to have survived). It is nothing but interpretation that paints any of the ancients as beinfg superstitious or religious. These are modern constructs founded on assumptions and some of these assumptions I've already debunked (such as ramps). I've already shown that the assumption that there was no change in the culture between the great pyramid building age and the middle dynasty is absurd, baseless, illogical, and incorrect in all likelyhood.

At some point in time there were highly primitive people but this probably disappeared almost immediately when language arose 40,000 years ago. Magic and religion couldn't protect people against predation and disaster but observation could and these observations were announced far and wide and passed down to children. All of history falls into place and makes perfect sense once it's realized that the language actually did change and the old science was utterly lost except for fragments of its metaphysics in modern religions. Cavefolk were far more interested in knowledge than charms and beliefs.

cladking · January 16, 2013

As long as I'm in the right forum I have some new speculations I'm working on today. These are unsupported except by previous deduction and previous evidence but I'm still in sight of solid ground. An interesting thing that people seem to not notice is that the sun rises at Giza almost exactly 60 sec (one minute) later each day all through early summer. It seems highly improbable this is a cosmic coincidence and more likely is evidence they invented the minute and it is the basis of the clock/ calender. It might have been the Sumerians instead but the point stands; the minute is an approximation of a natural phenomenon. It is a messaged number in order to get 1440 in a day. It's interesting that the 1440 is to the "sacred number" 1460 as 360 is to 365. The Egyptian calender was 360 days with five "epigomanal days" added to reflect the year.

There are so many relationships between numbers involved at Giza I'm beginning to speculate on the possibility of three dimensional geometry. Our euclidean systemn is essentially founded on the point with three rays to define other spatial dimensions so is one dimensional. The Egyptians might have used a spherical geometry based on the the one thing they knew; the earth. They said that "inertia" embraced all things which might imply much more than merely that they knew we are hurtling through space. They never drew maps and the like which might be because they saw all things from all perspectives. This is speculative but these people didn't think like us and they did use a sort of layered or multi-dimensional language.

Moontanman · January 17, 2013

Pyramids ~ 5,000 years ago... cave men ~ 35,000 years ago please elaborate on how you see a direct connection between them and something supporting your assertion that cave men left a written text...

cladking · January 17, 2013

Pyramids ~ 5,000 years ago... cave men ~ 35,000 years ago please elaborate on how you see a direct connection between them and something supporting your assertion that cave men left a written text...

They didn't leave a written text, they left a large body of knowledge as language.

The lack of a written language only impeded cavemen to the degree they could have individully learned to read and write. Generally groups were too small to have a "school" with more than a single student so the lack of books was not very limiting. They lacked paper, and access to those who might overcome this handicap. Trade was extremely limited before cities for logistical reasons. It's necessity that is the mother of invention and they had very little need for writing. There were, apparently, many individuals whose primary or sole function was to pass down history in oral form. But writing developed much later and possibly primarily by accident and serendipity.

Natural phenomena were defined anthropomorifically and became part of the language. These are what we misunderstand as "gods". For instance a natural phenomenon is the concept of inertia and was one of the "lions" they called "neters". When you see this word think "nature" because everywhere it's used in the ancient literature you can substitute these terms without changing meaning. This phenomenon was named "shu" and shu could stand without getting tired. His consort was "tefnut" which is what objects do when they stop "standing"; they fall. Tefnut was the goddess of downward. There's great evidence for this and I'll be happy to provide it if there's interest. Let me point out that part of the ancient understanding of nature appears to exceed our own since part of the defining characteristics of tefnut is that she was "sneezed out". Where modern man sneezes into a clothe that spreads the germs in all directions they knew to point the sneeze downward so it would fall to the floor. There was no need to point a sneeze at the floor unless they understood the concept of germs. Shu, on the other hand, was spewed out of his father atum. People might consider such things trivial but a literal understanding of the words is possible and it says who these people were and gives a description of the processes by which they built the pyramids that is actually in evidence.

For the Egyptians to know so much there is an implication that the knowledge couldn't come easily since they lacked modern science. It's apparent that at the very least they had huge amounts of observation behind them. Either philosophy was a common occupation which seems highly improbable in an era with no books or there was some other way to maintain the metaphysics by which they observed and understood nature. This strongly suggests that the most likely means was, indeed, language. Language which expresses itself through word order like computer code can generate quite complex ideas with very few words. This is exactly what exists in ancient times; very few words. Caveman knowledge grew until they could grrow their own food giving rise to cities. Cities gave rise to the need and ability to economically employ writing. Writing caused an explosion in human knowledge which so greatly complicated the language that it failed with the epicenter of this failure; "babel".

This is the state of afairs.

Today we have the opportunity to easily model this knowledge in computers. And then it can be brought up to date. The result would be extremely complicated and far beyond the ability of humans to speak or understand. It should be possible for computers. the results might be interesting.

I think the fact that "intelligence" is virtually disproven is one of the more interesting implications. I think people should know we are speaking what the ancients called "confused language". It's impossible to go back but this might help guide us going forward. People have a right to know their very distant ancestors weren't brutish and ignorant. Perhaps we can gain some insight into what it means to be human.

Edited January 17, 2013 by cladking

Semjase · January 17, 2013

The ancients had help, this documentary is the best documentary I've ever

seen on the pyramids and conclusively proves that they were built with advanced technology

not of it's day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooy2LTJoMVM

SamBridge · January 17, 2013

I'm not completely sure about this, but I am fairly certain the structure of the human brain hasn't changed much over a few thousand years, or even 20,000 years. The average IQ may have risen, that's partly genetic there are slight modifications that get made to various parts of the skull which allow the brain to grow better or worse in different areas, as well as I suppose maybe some cognitive abilities, but pretty smart people existed a while ago, and we wouldn't be where we are today without them.

cladking · January 17, 2013

I'm not completely sure about this, but I am fairly certain the structure of the human brain hasn't changed much over a few thousand years, or even 20,000 years. The average IQ may have risen, that's partly genetic there are slight modifications that get made to various parts of the skull which allow the brain to grow better or worse in different areas, as well as I suppose maybe some cognitive abilities, but pretty smart people existed a while ago, and we wouldn't be where we are today without them.

This is exactly the problem; where we are today. Numerous unsupportable trends are in place. People don't understand science so we allow the government to shut down generating plants supposedly to reduce so called greenhouse gas emmissions. Nevermind that this destroys vast amounts of wealth and causes jobs to go to China wghere they are very inefficient so the net result is even higher CO2 production each year. People are poorer in aggregate and more CO2 is added to our experiment on the planet. Rather than a comprehensive attack on production of the gas in light of human needs we are saddling the future with ever higher debt and fewer resources. It's simply inhuman.

Where we are today is also the problem inasmuch as to virtually all individuals this means we are at the pinnacle of creation. People to believe that in aggregate we know almost everything when the fact is we don't even necessarily know more than cavemen. Technology is mistaken for knowledge because people because people don't understand the true nature of science. Our modern science is based on a simple enough metaphysic but in order to understand science one needs to know this and each experiment that has led to our knowledge and how technology springs from it. So we have an extremely dangerous superstition that we know everything and this allows us to stumble blindly into the future with no consideration to people who might live there and no consideration to the past. There are tests of our ability to cope coming up and rather than address issues related to these tests we waste more than we use.

I believe ancient knowledge might be a help in several ways. Chief among them though is a simple understanding of just how ignorant we really are. Simply knowing this will help us see the future and to look for unintended consequences before the fact. Knowing we are part of nature in every real way might help us appreciate the majesty of nature and how small we really are. Understanding of the ancients might even help with mundane problems today such as new ways to attack problems with comprehension of phenomena or even the development of a format for artificial intelligence.

I'd be happy just to discuss what the cavemen really knew and how they came to know it. I'd be happy enough just to show that once the means to build the pyramid is known that we'll find an extinct science that was in many ways far superior to our own. I think we'll find that the human race has been going downhill in terms of intelligence for a very long time and that we have been on a 4000 year detour from much of our humanity. We mistake our comfort for intelligence and our technology for knowledge.

The ancients had help, this documentary is the best documentary I've ever

seen on the pyramids and conclusively proves that they were built with advanced technology

not of it's day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooy2LTJoMVM

Simply stated, the paradigm for our understanding of the pyramid and its builders is absurd in the extreme. It is virtually baseless in fact and is built on assumptions. This "theory" has proven incapable of making accurate predictions since it was invented 150 years ago.

There are people now trying to find a new paradigm that works and someday there is likely to be a lot of coalescence around something that does work and does make predictions. We'll find, no matter who or how they were built, that the builders were highly intelligent, knowledgeable, capable, and scientific. All the real evidence supports this. We'll find that where the builders said "the earth is high under the sky by means of thine arms tefnut", that they were literally and exactly correct by any real measure.

The current paradigm excludes all the words of the buiders and the era as being irrelevant. Once you really know what "tefnut" and her arms are then you have the thing solved. Even a caveman knew the answer to this and could use the knowledge along with all his knowledge simultaneously.

**Phi for All** · January 17, 2013

This is exactly the problem; where we are today. Numerous unsupportable trends are in place. People don't understand science so we allow the government to shut down generating plants supposedly to reduce so called greenhouse gas emmissions. Nevermind that this destroys vast amounts of wealth and causes jobs to go to China wghere they are very inefficient so the net result is even higher CO2 production each year. People are poorer in aggregate and more CO2 is added to our experiment on the planet. Rather than a comprehensive attack on production of the gas in light of human needs we are saddling the future with ever higher debt and fewer resources. It's simply inhuman.

Where we are today is also the problem inasmuch as to virtually all individuals this means we are at the pinnacle of creation. People to believe that in aggregate we know almost everything when the fact is we don't even necessarily know more than cavemen. Technology is mistaken for knowledge because people because people don't understand the true nature of science. Our modern science is based on a simple enough metaphysic but in order to understand science one needs to know this and each experiment that has led to our knowledge and how technology springs from it. So we have an extremely dangerous superstition that we know everything and this allows us to stumble blindly into the future with no consideration to people who might live there and no consideration to the past. There are tests of our ability to cope coming up and rather than address issues related to these tests we waste more than we use.

I believe ancient knowledge might be a help in several ways. Chief among them though is a simple understanding of just how ignorant we really are. Simply knowing this will help us see the future and to look for unintended consequences before the fact. Knowing we are part of nature in every real way might help us appreciate the majesty of nature and how small we really are. Understanding of the ancients might even help with mundane problems today such as new ways to attack problems with comprehension of phenomena or even the development of a format for artificial intelligence.

I'd be happy just to discuss what the cavemen really knew and how they came to know it. I'd be happy enough just to show that once the means to build the pyramid is known that we'll find an extinct science that was in many ways far superior to our own. I think we'll find that the human race has been going downhill in terms of intelligence for a very long time and that we have been on a 4000 year detour from much of our humanity. We mistake our comfort for intelligence and our technology for knowledge.

How could we possibly know "what the cavemen really knew and how they came to know it?" I'm not a huge fan of hunter/gatherer history, where practically every waking moment was spent gathering the basics for your small tribe.

There should be a name for this condition, where people assume that we were so much better off "in the olden days". That we were somehow closer to nature and our true path when we were isolated tribes of uncommunicative, warlike barbarians who thought that anything different or unexplainable was to be feared.

I'm actually in awe that we've been breaking down our language barriers and communicating, cooperating and learning from each other on a global basis. Sure, there are some things that are best done in groups of less than two hundred of us, but learning isn't one of them.

John Cuthber · January 17, 2013

The ancients had help, this documentary is the best documentary I've ever

seen on the pyramids and conclusively proves that they were built with advanced technology

not of it's day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooy2LTJoMVM

Please be aware that Semjase's use of the words "conclusively proves" does not tally with the meaning given in any dictionary.

manderson · January 17, 2013

I've just started working on the determination of what cavemen knew and when they knew it. I already was able to deduce most of the metaphysics from a literal understanding of the sole piece of writing that survives in the ancient language, the Pyramid Texts. Now I've begun trying to decipher and deduce the science itself. The educated caveman would have known the nature of gravity, sizes of the earth and moon, orbits (probably non-mathematically), and might have had a wildly inaccurate idea of the speed of light. The typical caveman would maker fewer false statements about nature than the average college graduate.

Of course they knew a great deal more than this as most of their knowledge concerned botany, zoology etc.

I'm guessing at this point that the typical caveman was more intelligent as well. It is probable that it was the women who were primarily the scientists.

I suppose people now are so superstitious and set in their thinking that they can't even entertain such ideas. We had backward and superstitious ancestors and nothing anyone can say and no amount of evidence will overturn it. This is simply such a massive reevaluation that it will require decades and demographic changes before it is fully accepted.

Cavemen were in europe during ice age and before (10,000 - 35,000yrs ago) and had no high culture. they cannot be compared to egyptians who had the planets most advanced civilization whose knowledge diffused to greece, rome, then great britain and USA. US capital was designed as a copy of thebes/luxor. u are 100% right, ancient civilizations (egypt, china, india in particular) were very advance even compared to today. the idea of the atom came from the egyptian god ATUM. aristotle, socrates, plato, herodotus and many greek philosophers went to school in egypt. the engineers that designed and supervised the building of the pyramids no doubt surpass most of the engineers we have today. the closest we have come to their engineering is building of the panama canal and building office towers - but theirs is more impressive because they did not rely on cranes and motorized vehicles. Christopher Dunn suggest they did so by harnessing the forces of nature (eg using water as elevator - much in the same way that the panama canal does today). The Dogon tribe in Mali (who descended from the ancient egyptians) were incredible astronomers and in fact discovered Sirius B star hundreds of years ago - it was only discovered in the past century by modern astronomers.

The biggest problem plaguing modern scientist, historians, etc is their EGO. They falsely believe ancient people were backwards and even stupid. they fail to realize that the best engineers of today cannot replicate the pyramids. they fail to appreciate the challenge they would face if they were to attempt to replicate building the Wall of China, Grand Temples of Luxor. The Bagavad Gita over 2,000years ago theorized about not just the Big Bang, but multiple universes (we still have not yet fully wrapped our heads around the idea of the Big Bang yet alone multiple universes)

The ancients had help, this documentary is the best documentary I've ever

seen on the pyramids and conclusively proves that they were built with advanced technology

not of it's day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooy2LTJoMVM

this recurring claim is an utter insult to the people. somehow Rome did not have help in building the coliseum or Greece the parthenon, but egypt in rabid minds had to be built by aliens or some other nonesense explanation. egyptians were scientifically very advance, so were ancient indians and ancient chinese. india, china, ethiopia and egypt for thousands of years were the planets pre-eminent civilizations. india and china are on their way to reclaiming their usual standing. ancient engineers, scientist & mathematicians had competence that rank with the best of the modern world. many of their accomplishments modern experts are unable to replicate - hence the insulting suggestion it was built by aliens (guess it feels better to say that than admit they were smarter than us). they did all they did without global warming or harm to the environment.

this alien talk is just bigotted nonesense.

**Phi for All** · January 17, 2013

Cavemen were in europe during ice age and before (10,000 - 35,000yrs ago) and had no high culture. they cannot be compared to egyptians who had the planets most advanced civilization whose knowledge diffused to greece, rome, then great britain and USA. US capital was designed as a copy of thebes/luxor. u are 100% right, ancient civilizations (egypt, china, india in particular) were very advance even compared to today. the idea of the atom came from the egyptian god ATUM. aristotle, socrates, plato, herodotus and many greek philosophers went to school in egypt. the engineers that designed and supervised the building of the pyramids no doubt surpass most of the engineers we have today. the closest we have come to their engineering is building of the panama canal and building office towers - but theirs is more impressive because they did not rely on cranes and motorized vehicles. Christopher Dunn suggest they did so by harnessing the forces of nature (eg using water as elevator - much in the same way that the panama canal does today). The Dogon tribe in Mali (who descended from the ancient egyptians) were incredible astronomers and in fact discovered Sirius B star hundreds of years ago - it was only discovered in the past century by modern astronomers.

The biggest problem plaguing modern scientist, historians, etc is their EGO. They falsely believe ancient people were backwards and even stupid. they fail to realize that the best engineers of today cannot replicate the pyramids. they fail to appreciate the challenge they would face if they were to attempt to replicate building the Wall of China, Grand Temples of Luxor. The Bagavad Gita over 2,000years ago theorized about not just the Big Bang, but multiple universes (we still have not yet fully wrapped our heads around the idea of the Big Bang yet alone multiple universes)

The biggest problem plaguing modern science-haters is their gullibility. I've never heard any person of science describe the Egyptians as "backward and even stupid". You've been only listening to people who try to tell us we couldn't build the pyramids today the way the Egyptians did. You know what? We could build them even better, and probably wouldn't need alien help. We could also build them using just the tools the Egyptians had, but it would be colossally expensive and there's no one who wants to spend that much to prove a point.

Take a look at the Panama Canal project, or the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco if you don't believe me. And please realize that as impressive as they are, it takes nothing away from the ancient Egyptians and their monumental building capabilities for THEIR time.

cladking · January 17, 2013

How could we possibly know "what the cavemen really knew and how they came to know it?" I'm not a huge fan of hunter/gatherer history, where practically every waking moment was spent gathering the basics for your small tribe.

There should be a name for this condition, where people assume that we were so much better off "in the olden days". That we were somehow closer to nature and our true path when we were isolated tribes of uncommunicative, warlike barbarians who thought that anything different or unexplainable was to be feared.

I'm actually in awe that we've been breaking down our language barriers and communicating, cooperating and learning from each other on a global basis. Sure, there are some things that are best done in groups of less than two hundred of us, but learning isn't one of them.

You have the point but miss the perspective. Every single human being who ever lived is a product of his time and place. This is because human knowledge at any given time is distinct to its location. It's the computer breaking down language barriers that have been inplace for 4000 years. It's computer code that is making the dessemination of ideas into all languages possible at the speed of light. We are approaching a hegemony of thought where a person's place will no longer be important going forward. He will primarily be a product of his time. Now the belief is that experimental science is the fount of all knowledge but very few individuals are familiar with what science is and no one is aware that there used to be a different science that prevailed on the face of the earth. This is simply no small matter. The other science was observationally based but derived from metaphysics. It was logic that deternmined the nature and meaning of observation. This science didn't arise because wise people sat around a campfire gnawing mammouth bones and speculating there must be a better way to live. This science was the natural outgrowth of natural language. Just as computer code is a sort of natural language so too was man's first language. It was based on sounds in nature and the needs of logic and it came to encode the ancient knowledge. It was a very simple language where complexity could be achieved only in word order like computer code.

It will prove pretty easy to put all the evidence on a paradigm that reflects reality. The reason nothing sticks to any of our paradigms is that they are greatly mistaken. You can't get good observation to stick to a faulty way of organizing observation. Everything we believe about our distant past is wrong. These weren't barefoot bumpkins nor noble savages. They weren't even exactly human the way we think of the term because they were first and foremost scientists and only secondarily animals. Their concerns were very human, even moreso than our own because they were intimately interested and connected to their future and past. Where we despoil the earth and waste her resources they would consider such behavior "sinful"

Deducing ancient knowledge should not be very difficult once people start thinking about it. Once we have the proper paradigm we'll also know where to look for evidence and what that evidence is when we see it. No doubt you point is valid that few people had opportunity to contribute to human knowledge since so many were preoccupied with more immediate concerns but there was less knowledge and more primitive knowledge making contribution that much easier. Remember all science is probably observationally based so even stumble bums chasing their dinner might make an important discovery or observation which could be passed down to following generations.

It is we who are misunderstanding everything.

Cavemen were in europe during ice age and before (10,000 - 35,000yrs ago) and had no high culture. they cannot be compared to egyptians who had the planets most advanced civilization whose knowledge diffused to greece, rome, then great britain and USA. US capital was designed as a copy of thebes/luxor. u are 100% right, ancient civilizations (egypt, china, india in particular) were very advance even compared to today. the idea of the atom came from the egyptian god ATUM. aristotle, socrates, plato, herodotus and many greek philosophers went to school in egypt. the engineers that designed and supervised the building of the pyramids no doubt surpass most of the engineers we have today. the closest we have come to their engineering is building of the panama canal and building office towers - but theirs is more impressive because they did not rely on cranes and motorized vehicles. Christopher Dunn suggest they did so by harnessing the forces of nature (eg using water as elevator - much in the same way that the panama canal does today). The Dogon tribe in Mali (who descended from the ancient egyptians) were incredible astronomers and in fact discovered Sirius B star hundreds of years ago - it was only discovered in the past century by modern astronomers.

The biggest problem plaguing modern scientist, historians, etc is their EGO. They falsely believe ancient people were backwards and even stupid. they fail to realize that the best engineers of today cannot replicate the pyramids. they fail to appreciate the challenge they would face if they were to attempt to replicate building the Wall of China, Grand Temples of Luxor. The Bagavad Gita over 2,000years ago theorized about not just the Big Bang, but multiple universes (we still have not yet fully wrapped our heads around the idea of the Big Bang yet alone multiple universes)

Your perspective is remarkably similar to my own and your knowledge of the ancients is comparable on some levels at least. I fully agree that Greece was founded on Egyptian thought and it appears possible that this is related to Dogon beliefs. My primary divergence is that I believe there is a nearly invisible change in the language that took place about 2000 BC and is remembered as the story of the tower of babel. This change in the language masked many of the ideas that Greece borrowed and then these ideas were never credited. Greece adopted all the civilization it conquered and merely got a lot more from Egypt than others.

It seems obvious that Egypt and the Dogon (if applicable) also had precedents and were we able to track all these precedents we would find that even the very first people 40,000 yeatrs ago contributed. In other words my contention is human progress (thot) was a steady progression until 4,000 years ago when the language was confused. It is the computer that has made it possible to discover this although we eventually would have turned up physical evidence to learn it.

The biggest problem plaguing modern science-haters is their gullibility. I've never heard any person of science describe the Egyptians as "backward and even stupid". You've been only listening to people who try to tell us we couldn't build the pyramids today the way the Egyptians did. You know what? We could build them even better, and probably wouldn't need alien help. We could also build them using just the tools the Egyptians had, but it would be colossally expensive and there's no one who wants to spend that much to prove a point.

Take a look at the Panama Canal project, or the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco if you don't believe me. And please realize that as impressive as they are, it takes nothing away from the ancient Egyptians and their monumental building capabilities for THEIR time.

No. Egyptologists call these people backward, superstitious, stinky footed bumpkins. According to Egyptology every thing that survives from before 2000 BC is evidence of religion, superstition, and magic. Even infrastructure for building pyramids is invariably pronounced to be religious in origin.

Here's a more dramatic sample;

722c. Thy foot shall not pass over, thy step shall not stride through,

722d. thou shalt not tread upon the (corpse)-secretion of Osiris.

723a. Thou shalt tiptoe heaven like Śȝḥ (the toe-star); thy soul shall be pointed like Sothis (the pointed-star).

This is translated to suggest the gods themselves needed to be warned against walking through "corpse drippings". One should tiptoe if one must walk in the fluids coming from a rotting corpse. I won't even get into the tremendous illogic of a dead god having actual drippings but this is reflective of how our current "scientists" understand the pyramid builders. I won't explain the lines since people don't like it but suffice to say that Osiris' "efflux" is actually CO2 that they called "risings begetter" because it caused foam to rise in beer, Osiris to stand, and cake to rise.

There's nothing wrong with "observation> hypothesis> experiment> conclusion. Despite the fact that we are so confused it has given us technology and wealth. It's not this metaphysics with which I find fault but rather the near universal misunderstanding of it.

manderson · January 17, 2013

The biggest problem plaguing modern science-haters is their gullibility. I've never heard any person of science describe the Egyptians as "backward and even stupid". You've been only listening to people who try to tell us we couldn't build the pyramids today the way the Egyptians did. You know what? We could build them even better, and probably wouldn't need alien help. We could also build them using just the tools the Egyptians had, but it would be colossally expensive and there's no one who wants to spend that much to prove a point.

Take a look at the Panama Canal project, or the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco if you don't believe me. And please realize that as impressive as they are, it takes nothing away from the ancient Egyptians and their monumental building capabilities for THEIR time.

i love modern science. i deplore conceited egomaniacs who insult the intelligence of ancient intellectuals. modern science did not develop in a vacuum....it owes its foundation to the ancients who were conquered especially greece and rome's conquest of egypt. unfortunately Rome embraced christianity and plunged europe into the Dark Ages as the popes favoured stories of witchcraft and flat earth rather than egyptian knowledge of round earth, atum (atom), cosmology, engineering, etc. the Rennaisance was an emergence out of Europes Dark Ages NOT a FIRST TIME discovery of scientific knowledge. Such advance knowledge was commonplace in china, india and egypt for thousands of years before. Chinese invented gun powder but used it for firecrackers, india, china and Ghana sailed the oceans to the Americas and traded with american natives hundreds of years before Columbus was born and while Rome thought the earth was flat. So because our society has only recently emerged we assume no one did so before us - what arrogance? what ego?

**Phi for All** · January 17, 2013

Where the hell are we getting all these "prophets" from?! We've got at least four members now who joined a SCIENCE DISCUSSION FORUM to tell us we're all wrong, we have it backwards, they can PROVE it, they have the only true knowledge. Yet they make these awful blanket generalizations ("Egyptologists call these people backward, superstitious, stinky footed bumpkins") and assume their narrow interpretations of ancient texts are the only correct ones among thousands of other interpretations. And on top of that they claim that science is at fault for its ego, or its limitations, and we'd all be so much better off if we just thought about it.

Science is like a jigsaw puzzle cut from the layers of an onion, interlocked, going all the way down to the core, many pieces still missing, but overarchingly successful and meticulously constructed with as little bias and ego as is humanly possible. What these "prophets" offer is nothing short of personal opinion wrapped up in a lack of rigor and covered with lazy mockery of literally millions of man-hours of scientific study. Science isn't trying to prove anything, it's just looking for the best supported explanations.

i love modern science. i deplore conceited egomaniacs who insult the intelligence of ancient intellectuals. modern science did not develop in a vacuum....it owes its foundation to the ancients who were conquered especially greece and rome's conquest of egypt. unfortunately Rome embraced christianity and plunged europe into the Dark Ages as the popes favoured stories of witchcraft and flat earth rather than egyptian knowledge of round earth, atum (atom), cosmology, engineering, etc. the Rennaisance was an emergence out of Europes Dark Ages NOT a FIRST TIME discovery of scientific knowledge. Such advance knowledge was commonplace in china, india and egypt for thousands of years before. Chinese invented gun powder but used it for firecrackers, india, china and Ghana sailed the oceans to the Americas and traded with american natives hundreds of years before Columbus was born and while Rome thought the earth was flat. So because our society has only recently emerged we assume no one did so before us - what arrogance? what ego?

I agree with this whole post... except the part where you generalize about "our society has only recently emerged we assume no one did so before us'. Please don't lump everyone together in this way. There are some people who have no respect for the early works of mankind, but science-minded people should realize that what we have today is based on what we learned yesterday.

manderson · January 17, 2013

You have the point but miss the perspective. Every single human being who ever lived is a product of his time and place. This is because human knowledge at any given time is distinct to its location. It's the computer breaking down language barriers that have been inplace for 4000 years. It's computer code that is making the dessemination of ideas into all languages possible at the speed of light. We are approaching a hegemony of thought where a person's place will no longer be important going forward. He will primarily be a product of his time. Now the belief is that experimental science is the fount of all knowledge but very few individuals are familiar with what science is and no one is aware that there used to be a different science that prevailed on the face of the earth. This is simply no small matter. The other science was observationally based but derived from metaphysics. It was logic that deternmined the nature and meaning of observation. This science didn't arise because wise people sat around a campfire gnawing mammouth bones and speculating there must be a better way to live. This science was the natural outgrowth of natural language. Just as computer code is a sort of natural language so too was man's first language. It was based on sounds in nature and the needs of logic and it came to encode the ancient knowledge. It was a very simple language where complexity could be achieved only in word order like computer code.

It will prove pretty easy to put all the evidence on a paradigm that reflects reality. The reason nothing sticks to any of our paradigms is that they are greatly mistaken. You can't get good observation to stick to a faulty way of organizing observation. Everything we believe about our distant past is wrong. These weren't barefoot bumpkins nor noble savages. They weren't even exactly human the way we think of the term because they were first and foremost scientists and only secondarily animals. Their concerns were very human, even moreso than our own because they were intimately interested and connected to their future and past. Where we despoil the earth and waste her resources they would consider such behavior "sinful"

Deducing ancient knowledge should not be very difficult once people start thinking about it. Once we have the proper paradigm we'll also know where to look for evidence and what that evidence is when we see it. No doubt you point is valid that few people had opportunity to contribute to human knowledge since so many were preoccupied with more immediate concerns but there was less knowledge and more primitive knowledge making contribution that much easier. Remember all science is probably observationally based so even stumble bums chasing their dinner might make an important discovery or observation which could be passed down to following generations.

It is we who are misunderstanding everything.

Your perspective is remarkably similar to my own and your knowledge of the ancients is comparable on some levels at least. I fully agree that Greece was founded on Egyptian thought and it appears possible that this is related to Dogon beliefs. My primary divergence is that I believe there is a nearly invisible change in the language that took place about 2000 BC and is remembered as the story of the tower of babel. This change in the language masked many of the ideas that Greece borrowed and then these ideas were never credited. Greece adopted all the civilization it conquered and merely got a lot more from Egypt than others.

It seems obvious that Egypt and the Dogon (if applicable) also had precedents and were we able to track all these precedents we would find that even the very first people 40,000 yeatrs ago contributed. In other words my contention is human progress (thot) was a steady progression until 4,000 years ago when the language was confused. It is the computer that has made it possible to discover this although we eventually would have turned up physical evidence to learn it.

No. Egyptologists call these people backward, superstitious, stinky footed bumpkins. According to Egyptology every thing that survives from before 2000 BC is evidence of religion, superstition, and magic. Even infrastructure for building pyramids is invariably pronounced to be religious in origin.

Here's a more dramatic sample;

722c. Thy foot shall not pass over, thy step shall not stride through,

722d. thou shalt not tread upon the (corpse)-secretion of Osiris.

723a. Thou shalt tiptoe heaven like Śȝḥ (the toe-star); thy soul shall be pointed like Sothis (the pointed-star).

This is translated to suggest the gods themselves needed to be warned against walking through "corpse drippings". One should tiptoe if one must walk in the fluids coming from a rotting corpse. I won't even get into the tremendous illogic of a dead god having actual drippings but this is reflective of how our current "scientists" understand the pyramid builders. I won't explain the lines since people don't like it but suffice to say that Osiris' "efflux" is actually CO2 that they called "risings begetter" because it caused foam to rise in beer, Osiris to stand, and cake to rise.

There's nothing wrong with "observation> hypothesis> experiment> conclusion. Despite the fact that we are so confused it has given us technology and wealth. It's not this metaphysics with which I find fault but rather the near universal misunderstanding of it.

CHADKING: thanks for your feedback. you said: "My primary divergence is that I believe there is a nearly invisible change in the language that took place about 2000 BC and is remembered as the story of the tower of babel. This change in the language masked many of the ideas that Greece borrowed and then these ideas were never credited. Greece adopted all the civilization it conquered and merely got a lot more from Egypt than others. It seems obvious that Egypt and the Dogon (if applicable) also had precedents and were we able to track all these precedents we would find that even the very first people 40,000 yeatrs ago contributed."

i see no divergence in language. we lost the spoken egyptian language but recovered the written version via rosetta stone. the spoken language although extinct can be traced among the descendants of ancient egyptians who scattered southward, but no one wants to look at those people because it does not map with what they wish to feed the masses. Here is an article that connects dispired egyptians linguistically to the Luo Tribe: http://www.luhya.net/documents/LUO%20ORIGIN%20OF%20CIVILISATION.pdf. To me nothing has been "masked", rather they simply are EXCLUDED from what is taught for political reasons....however if you are unaware of the exclusion techniques it will appear information is "masked/unknown/mysterious". I suggest reading Chris Dun, Cheikh Anta Diop, Gerald Massey, Volney's Ruin of Empire, Herodotus. I like Chris Dun for his perspective as an engineer instead of these historians that call themselves egyptologist who have no expertise in engineering, physics or mathematics but purport to explain ancient physics, engineering and mathematical systems (these guys are misinformed and come with political agendas....i just want clean facts).

Where the hell are we getting all these "prophets" from?! We've got at least four members now who joined a SCIENCE DISCUSSION FORUM to tell us we're all wrong, we have it backwards, they can PROVE it, they have the only true knowledge. Yet they make these awful blanket generalizations ("Egyptologists call these people backward, superstitious, stinky footed bumpkins") and assume their narrow interpretations of ancient texts are the only correct ones among thousands of other interpretations. And on top of that they claim that science is at fault for its ego, or its limitations, and we'd all be so much better off if we just thought about it.

Science is like a jigsaw puzzle cut from the layers of an onion, interlocked, going all the way down to the core, many pieces still missing, but overarchingly successful and meticulously constructed with as little bias and ego as is humanly possible. What these "prophets" offer is nothing short of personal opinion wrapped up in a lack of rigor and covered with lazy mockery of literally millions of man-hours of scientific study. Science isn't trying to prove anything, it's just looking for the best supported explanations.

I agree with this whole post... except the part where you generalize about "our society has only recently emerged we assume no one did so before us'. Please don't lump everyone together in this way. There are some people who have no respect for the early works of mankind, but science-minded people should realize that what we have today is based on what we learned yesterday.

i apologize TO YOU for the generalization that lumped YOU in. i stand by the general statement as applicable to most, but with exclusion for you and the few to whom it does not apply.

cladking · January 18, 2013

I can't copy and paste or even quote a previous message for some reason.

Manderson said; "I see no divergence in language.".

This is the crux of the problem. Egyptology had deciphered the language with good accuracy before the 1870's when the Pyramid Texts was found. Virtually no writing of any sort from before 2000 BC existed up to this point. The little that survived and was found was less well translated, comprised primarily lists and single words like labels, and was not understood grammatically. Words were recognized but meaning was unknown. Certainly they had a more than adequate understanding of the later writing which existed in copious writings and even comprised a few intact manuscripts. This writing can be enigmatic but the meaning usually seems clear and is not entirely dissimilar to how we express ourselves. It's simply archaeic and foreign to most readers.

Unfortunately the one thing that survived from before 2000 BC was the one thing that just mostly coincidentally survived right across 2000 BC. The Pyramid Texts is merely the ritual that was read aloud to the crowds at the ascension ceremony of the king and it was maintained right across the change in the language and updated to new language eventually becoming the book of the dead. These later works are religious, magical, and "superstitious" in nature. Their meaning is pretty clear and these incantations are primarily the spells the king needs to get him to an afterlife in the elysium fields.

When Egtptology found the PT they were very obviously an older version of this work so there was the immediate assumption that they are exacly the same thing. Nothing could be further from the truth. The one thing everyone should realize is that translations of the later work are comprehensible but translations of the Pyramid Texts are just gobblety gook. Rather than investigating the possibility that meaning was expressed differently or there was a different meaning there was a tendency to simply take the lack of any coherent meaning as prima facie evidence that the pyramid builders were backward and superstitious. Indeed, since there is no other evidence that defines the builders Egyptology has simply projected the beliefs of later people to the pyramid building age and used this assumption that nothing changed as justification for interpreting and translating the Pyramid Texts as being identical to later works. Most of what survives from ancient Egypt even to later times has come out of tombs and pyramids because these were built up on "the horizon" in the desert where materials are more likely to survive. This massive sampling error has given them a very warped and wholly inaccurate picture of not only the oldest Egyptians but those after the language change as well. This leaves Egyptology with virtually no evidence at all and nothing to work with other than a mistranslation and misinterpretation of the PT and a few assumptions that seem certain but are in actuality wholly unevidenced. The assumption that the builders were so primitive that the only possible means to lift stones was to drag them up ramps is the most easily disproved and the one that most led them astray. The means they used is obvious yet it wasn't seen before now (or at least it wasn't published); the stones were pulled up the pyramid one step (81' 3") at a time. This is the description of Herodotus as well as a few other ancient sources such as Manetho who implied the ancients believed water shot up out of the ground.

The point is Egyptology excludes much of the real evidence as being irrelevant or a manifestation of religion. When the shackles of the assumptions are removed there is actually sigificant amounts of evidence that is relevant. For instance the great pyramids are built on water collection devices! The ancients called these the place of Set or "Ssm.t" (sacred aprons) and they were necessary to collect the water that was channeled through canals to where the counterweights operated. This is all fully consistent with the titles of the men and women who built the pyramids. There wasn't a huge city full of stone draggers and ramp builders nursing their aching backs but a tiny little village full of men, women, and children who operated boats, canals, and weighed the material before being lifted.

This is what the Pyramid Texts is actually describing in very "plain" language. This is how I've been able to find so much evidence for the means that was actually used; there are clues and descriptions throughout the PT. The problem is the interpretation of the PT as nonsense underlies much of the study of the ancients. People want to understand them and there's not much other than the PT. If I'm right (I am) then every single thing that people now believe about the PT is wrong. They don't want to deal with it. They don't want to try to test the theory because they apparently are afraid it's correct. There are countless easy ways to test this including a simple $200 chemical analysis of carbonated water that still exists under the ground today! They aren't testing their theories either and I've already debunked the possibility that ramps were used. Remember the Egyptological viewpoint isn't that ramps were used or that such evidence exists (it doesn't) the belief is that the ancients had no other means to lift stones. The word "ramp" isn't even attested anywhere until after the end of great pyramid building.

Egyptology (as it applies to great pyramids and their builders) is a construct founded on four incorrect assumptions;

-that the pyramids were tombs

-that they had to have been built by ramps

-that language and the people never changed

-that the people were superstitious

This doesn't mean that a great deal of genius hasn't gone into learning to understand these people and it's not at all unusual that Egyptology is quite right in a left handed sort of way. It's a wonder they learned so much with so little evidence and incorrect assumptions.

They are still wrong and this is of critical importance at least to our understanding of the past.

cladking · January 19, 2013

In a nutshell what we have is this.

The great pyramids were all built with the usage of water in counterweights and the only piece of literature that survives says it explicitly in a sort of computer code. Not only is this what the physical evidence supports but it is indicative of separate metaphysics from modern ideas. Despite the fact that I can show this to a significant level of confidence as well as show how to interpret the writing there is no interest today by egyptologists, scientists, or apparently philosophers. Even though the theory is falsifiable the only response to date has been Dr Hawass referring to it as "other unscientific theories on the net". Even though the paradigm is in shambles and has never been able to answer questions or make accurate predictions it is accepted as gospel by billions of people with a vested interest in the status quo. Meanwhile the powers that be refuse not only to test any new theories but have never even tested their own. Even such basic things as forensic examinations of the pyramids has never been done. Infrared imaging has never been done. The list of basic science and its tools that have not been applied to the great pyramids is not a short one.

I'm surprised that in this day and age that so few are interested. I wonder what it will take to get the world off the dime. How can people tolerate a belief system to define humanity? Is this really what humans are; the result of confusion? I wonder what we might become if we learn the truth and know we are confused.

Ringer · January 19, 2013

This is the crux of the problem. Egyptology had deciphered the language with good accuracy before the 1870's when the Pyramid Texts was found. Virtually no writing of any sort from before 2000 BC existed up to this point. The little that survived and was found was less well translated, comprised primarily lists and single words like labels, and was not understood grammatically. Words were recognized but meaning was unknown. Certainly they had a more than adequate understanding of the later writing which existed in copious writings and even comprised a few intact manuscripts. This writing can be enigmatic but the meaning usually seems clear and is not entirely dissimilar to how we express ourselves. It's simply archaeic and foreign to most readers.

Unfortunately the one thing that survived from before 2000 BC was the one thing that just mostly coincidentally survived right across 2000 BC. The Pyramid Texts is merely the ritual that was read aloud to the crowds at the ascension ceremony of the king and it was maintained right across the change in the language and updated to new language eventually becoming the book of the dead. These later works are religious, magical, and "superstitious" in nature. Their meaning is pretty clear and these incantations are primarily the spells the king needs to get him to an afterlife in the elysium fields.

Yes, as long as you completely ignore Mesopotamia, whose writings have been dated around 3000 BCE.

cladking · January 19, 2013

Yes, as long as you completely ignore Mesopotamia, whose writings have been dated around 3000 BCE.

I was referring to Egyptian writing which didn't really exist from before 2000 BC when the world language apparently changed. This changed in the 1870's when the Pyramid Texts were found.

As regarding other writing, I do have some small familiarity with it. Sumerian is the only other writing that survives and it survives on clay cylinders. This should spark a great deal of mystery but no one seems to even notice that no books and no paper/ papyrus survives from before 2000 BC. We know the papyrus is durable enough to last so long because a blank book survives from 3000 BC!!! But no one seems to question why recorded history doesn't begin until 2000 BC. There is a hard line before which writing hardly exists. I intend to expand on this exact point later and how I believe this line came to exist.

The Mesopotamian (Sumerian) writing is really quite interesting. I believe this writing is quite similar in content to the Egyptian but where the rituals of the Pyramid Texts were mistaken for spells and incantation by later people the Sumerian was mistaken for the epic of Gilgamesh. This writing is much more highly fragmented and much less extensive. I might be able to deduce its meaning but it would be of no benefit to me if I did. I've already learned the name of water pressure in it and just don't see how a proper interpretation of the work can help people understand the important points here. It's a blind alley for me and bad strategy to work on understanding it. It would also be tactically far more difficult because these writings are so much smaller in extent and so much more fragmented. There might be no real world referent, such as the pyramids, to help stay on track. Once the metaphysics are better understood then this might be great fun for someone else to decipher. I kind of have my hands full here and have been virtually working alone except a little help from my friends. Egyptologists haven't talked to me in years because I feed on information and they'd rather I starve.

People need to remember that I solved the Pyramid Texts by determination of referents. Once a word is used enough time in context the meaning becomes apparent and this meaning can be inserted back into the work to solve for other referents. This is probably a more legitimate means to understand something than even experimental science believe it or not. The fact is that words mean what the author thinks they do rather than what any dictionary says. This is true whether you're speaking modern gobblety gook or the "words of the gods". Sumerian writing simply doesn't use words enough time to make this process simple.

cladking · January 23, 2013

To me nothing has been "masked", rather they simply are EXCLUDED from what is taught for political reasons....however if you are unaware of the exclusion techniques it will appear information is "masked/unknown/mysterious".

Of course there are political and religious considerations in our understanding of history and our

past. People are married not only to the concept that our ancestors were superstitious but that it

was the Greeks who lifted us out of our ignorance. This isn't to say that there is no truth to such a

view but that this truth pales in comparison to several much greater truths. There is probably some

basis for believing that the Greeks actually understood some of the ancient writings. This is diffi-

cult to ascertain but is implied by the fact that they venerated the ancient Egyptians and that traces

of the ancient language and literature seem to appear in the hermetic writings. It's hard to imagine

an "advanced" culture like ancient Greece venerating the beliefs of the 7th century BC Egyptians.

It might well have been a great culture but wiithout mincing words it was not founded on logic and

philosophical principles. Indeed the word "philosophy" likely is derived from the Egyptians while the

late era Egyptians were founded on something much different than logic.

This leaves the question of evidence for the change in the language of 2000 BC and the question

of why the evidence isn't much more widespread. There appear to be numerous reasons. I believe

the biggest is that there was no longer a value to the ancient metaphysics after it was no longer used

for communication. Initially there would be some grave concern over preserving as much as the ear-

liest writing as possible since this was much of what they knew as ancient history. They would have

written treatises on the translation of the ancient language into modern language. They would have

preserved as much of the technology as possible and written resources on its application and means

to generate it. Then, of course, the final source of evidence is the preservation of the ancient writing

itself. So where is all this evidence and why does so little exist other than the story of babel?

The most telling thing is the paucity of evidence from shortly after this change as well. Few things sur-

vive so the chances of one of the preceding existing are greatly diminished. Very early people would

forget how to translate this material without instruction. Remember that the language was a mess at

the time of the change because the vocabulary was severely to restricted to make meaning clear. New

words were being invented daily to fill in the blanks and direct the listener to the intended meaning. In

only a few generation the original language speakers were gone. I believe you can see the the torture

this inspired in I Corinthians 14 which I believe is an appeal to attract more people to the new religions

springing up. This "appears" to have been written much earlier than its suggested era. This fits in with

the concept that the writers of the Bible attempted to incorporate as much as the ancient writing as

possible. Even Genesis can be interpreted to be even older and as the Egyptian concept of creation

in its confused (post language change) form.

Ancient people had access to significant amounts of the older writing but simply couldn't understand it.

The few who did placed no value on it. As the books crumbled with age they simply went on the trash

heaps or were lost to book worms, fire, and flood. Things that aren't valued have staggering attrition

rates. The Egyptian priests might have had some original manuscripts at late as the Greek era and

even the ability to understand but the Greeks credited no one for their successes; they adopted cul-

tures they conquered rather than crediting them for technology or ideas. There seems no obvious clue

that they were able to decipher ancient writing. This might mean the ancient language was updated in-

to modern language but, again, all we have to work with is the writing that survives some of which might

have originally been written in ancient language.

I believe the lack of evidence is largely the lack of interest after the change. The very nature of the

metaphysics was such that it had no value as language any longer and coiuld no longer generate new

knowledge. Any concern for ancient writing would be to preserve as much of its products as possible

rather than its source. The "philosophy" was preserved preferentially to the language.

Now there's just not much of anything at all left from before 2000 BC other than the Pyramid Texts which

are considered mere gobblety gook. Yet this book can be reduced to something like a geometry equa-

tion. This should not be true of any modern language which certainly implies it's nothing like modern

language. It's like computer code and you must understand all of it before you understand a part of it.

The words themselves might be a highly formal form of the language rather than what people spoke

day to day but it still paints a picture of people who don't think like we do. It still says in "plain English"

that the "god" known as osiris was an effervescent column of water that off-gassed CO2 and lifted stones

with the "boats of balance". We are still at square one which is no one can show this isn't true. We still

have all the physical evidence that agrees closely with this while the current paradigm is in shambles.

cladking · January 23, 2013

!

Moderator Note

Oy! Pyramid Texts stay in the speculations thread please!

Excellent. Without the Pyramid Texts my case is virtually air-tight because ALL of the physical evidence supports the idea that they used counterweights full of water to lift stones to build the great pyramids. The PT is essentially used by Egyptologists as proof that the bulders were superstitious bumpkins and as such had no other means to build these pyramids. Briefly, the pyramids are five steps because they pulled stones up the sides one step at a time and they were built on water collection devices because they reused this water for myriad purposes inclusing more lifting. Evidence is actually fairly extensive and I'll be happy to elucidate any point. It should be added that no physical evidence exists that any stones were lifted on any great pyramids with the use of ramps. The "evidence" for ramps is that they were too primitive to employ any other means. This argument is logically flawed as well since ramps would have been grossly inefficient and require more effort than the pyramid itself. On completion of the core the ramps would then have to be rebuilt to apply the cladding stones which used to be on them. Ramps can be excluded altogether as a possibility on the basis of extensive physical evidence and logic.

My contention is that the ancient metaphysics was the language and since none of the language survives other than the Pyramid Texts this leaves us to infer the knowledge and epistomology from the physical evidence itself. In the real world the Pyramid Texts will come to be seen as a form of metaphysics but unlike everything else I can't show this to the unwilling nor in this thread. I can show that they had extensive knowledge and that the pyramid manifests significant amounts of that knowledge. It's not just the extensive use of the highest technology of the day including bronze, lead, gold, and numerous other materials primaily created or refined by man but the nature of the constructions themselves. Many of the techniques used are still poorly understood or not understood at all. They polished large quantities of granite and laid water tight joints between 70' and 140'. The interior would have required extensive math to lay out as a plan and its exactness demands it was all planned. The original casing stones were so exacly placed that visitors of the time couldn't see the seams and believed some stones were 20' in lenght. Petrie described the surviving casing stones as having been laid with "optical precision".

One can make an argument that this could all be done by stinky footed bumpkins but then comes the layout of the Giza Plateau. The Great Pyramid is oriented perfectly north to south. This means they had knowledge of true north to a very high degree of accuracy. This would not come about by watching shadows and required stellar observation and this is reinforced by the existence of a calender and their naming of some stars (in the PT). It's also reinforced by the fact that the calender appears to have been based on the minute. This is the lenght of time that sunrise increases daily at Giza during early summer. It is divided into 60 seconds which is the length of time of the human heart beat. All of nature was set to the music of the human heart beat (60 Hz). The three largest pyramids are aligned with sunset on the winter solstice such that their shadows combine along a line stretching nearly to the sea. This must have been a wondrous sight to those who knew to look. Perhaps most incredibly, and less well known, is that each side of the Great Pyramid doesn't lie in a single plane. Each side is actually comprised of two planes slightly offset from one another such that there is a seam running from the apex to the bottom middle of each side. This offset is only a few inches but causes the pyramid to "eat its own shadow" at sunset on the autumal and vernal equinoxes.

A great deal of knowledge manifests in not only the pyramids but the entire culture that built them. We are viewing this culture through misunderstanding, confusion, and 19th century eyes. We are simply ignoring the actual evidence in a headlong rush to the answers while refusing to do the basic 21st century science that would answer these questions positively. Until our science is done ramps remain debunked and the actual evidence suggests a very sophisticated and intelligent people whose metaphysics are not in evidence. I believe the missing metaphysics are in plain sight and mistaken for gobblety gook.

Edited January 23, 2013 by cladking

cladking · January 23, 2013

Cavemen would have had an excellent estimation of the shape and size of the earth by direct observation. They would simply see that the horizon dips down on both sides over water. One can get a good feel for the size of the planet by this alone. Then to refine the estimate the distance measured from a height would show how much of this height was hidden behind the horizon. No doubt they used an estimate equivalent to about 16' for each five miles. They could confirm their theory by observation of the shape of the earth on the moon during an eclipse. Certainly all the nearby bodies in the heavens (including Venus) are round. The distance to the moon can be estimated by the relative heights of the tides once they deduced (or discovered) that the pull of an object (tefnut) is decreased by the inverse of the square of the distance. This could be observed in numerous ways including the size of a ripple in a lake. This means would not provide a close estimate but would be sufficient for all their practical purposes. They would probably have some comprehension of the nature of the atmosphere because they knew they needed air and that air had constituent parts. They could see the planets orbiting differently than the stars and that the stars "twinkled" and would likely deduce that this was caused by the tiny angle of vision (and perhaps atmospheric disturbance). Even the depth of the atmosphere can be estimated by the varying air pressure. This estimate would be greatly refined over the years from "the air too thin up there" to the same sort of units that we used today to measure it.

The distance to the sun was likely poorly estimated with only the shadows of the earth and moon to work with. They would quickly see it was a very long way since the moon's shadow has the same apparent size despite its position. It's apparent ancient man sun gazed to affect his pineal gland and quite possibly observed sunspots. It would be noticed that the aurora boreaolis would peak a few days after such events and this "speed" was likely mistaken for the speed of light. While wildly inaccurate, it still would have been sufficient for all ancient purposes.

Ancient science was far more adept at disclosing concepts and accurate modeling (especially ancient cosmology) than it was in producing technology. There's some reason to believe their pharmacology or botany, entomology, zoology etc were somewhat better since it was cavemen who invented the agriculture which gave rise to great cities. It was cavemen who preceded (khepri) the genius of the Egyptians.

Somehow all of this technology and its metaphysics were utterly lost around 2000 BC and the only thing we have to try to understand it is the gobblety gook known as the Pyramid Texts. There is something very wrong with this picture. It is simply not logical to use the fact we don't understand something as evidence those who produced it were superstitious and backward and this goes many times over when it was they who gave us the pyramids and civilization itself.

cladking · January 23, 2013

!

Moderator Note

Oy! Pyramid Texts stay in the speculations thread please!

There is also some evidence for how these structures were built that show a highly intelligent and sophisticated people. Egyptologists point to each feature and say it was made for "religious purposes" but the majority of these features actually disclose the means used to build. The pyramids are founded on water collection devices. Before the first stone went onthe pyramid a large water tight structure was made. In the case of the Great Pyramid this device also channeled water to the two points on the cliff face which would have been the most advantageous places to put counterweights. One of these counterweight runs is actually man-made because the natural cliff had the wrong shape. These runs are almost exactly 300' in lenght which is exactly the distance ancient reports claimed stones "moved toward the pyramid". Other reports say a "priest" attached a piece of paper to it and then it "flew away" (presumably 300' toward the pyramid). Much of the runs are satill apparent and the main run to the quarry even has a "tomb" that might function as an hydraulic elevator. A huge hole on the east side of the pyramid appears to be an hydraulic leveling device for loading the "boat" that took stones up the side. There is water erosion in the canal leading to the place of the eastern counterweight. Remember this is a desert and the only water is believed to be in downpours for which these canals are woefully underdesigned. They simply couldn't channel any but the smallest rains and it's known rainfall was as much as 4 times greater during construction. These "aprons" under and surrounding the pyramids are perfectly level and imply that water must have been used to achieve such accuracy. There is a cistern directly downhill from the the second pyramid (G2) which could not be filled in a rain event because the inlet was too small. This simply screams that there was running water since they wouldn't want to drink the dirty Nile water which was 150' lower and half a mile away. Running water means there was an unknown source.

Design, construction, and maintenance of ramps would have been onerous tasks but nothing would have been more onerous than dragging stones up them. It's all wholly unevidenced anyway and the word "ramp" isn't even attested until long after great pyramid building ended. The pyramids are five step structures as can be seen on the gravimetric scan half way down the page here;

http://hdbui.blogspot.com/

This is not at all consistent with the use of ramps.

What we can see is vertical lines on the pyramids;

[http://www.puretravel.com/uploadedresources/continents/subcontinents/countries/Giza%20pyramids%20Egypt_20090218143916.jpg

What we see is a deep groove from the top to bottom on all four sides;

http://www.catchpenny.org/images/ikonos.gif

http://www.catchpenny.org/concave.html

These features are not religious and are not the work of people who had no means of building pyramids other than tying a rope to them and dragging them up ramps they themselves built. The titles of the builders do not reflect ignorant bumpkins but rather sophisticated and intelligent people. They had jobs like "Overseer of the Metal Shop" and "Weigher/ Reckoner". There are no jobs like harness makers, basket weavers, or overseer of stone draggers. All this is a modern superstition born of the idea our ancestors were incapable of inventing even the simplest systems and making the most basic observations. We assume that their science and technology were basic even as we can see that it was not. Since there is no preserved science from so long ago we might assume their metaphysics was so different than ours we might not recognize it if it were a snake and bit us. First we need to use our science to discover how this was built and then I'm confident their metaphysics and their epistomology will slowly come into sharp focus.

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