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henix
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17 Aug 2011, 2:23 pm

Scientists to the best of my knowledge are still confused how such structures (and some similar cases) could be made by human beings as basic as 2500 BCE. Some argue that they might be constructed by aliens. But I'm thinking of the following...

You ever thought, why should Autistics have always formed the same proportion of the population of the world? :)

Good old days maybe :p


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17 Aug 2011, 2:24 pm

henix wrote:
Scientists to the best of my knowledge are still confused how such structures (and some similar cases) could be made by human beings as basic as 2500 BCE. Some argue that they might be constructed by aliens. But I'm thinking of the following...

You ever thought, why should Autistics have always formed the same proportion of the population of the world? :)

Good old days maybe :p


what does the ability to build pyramids have to do with autism?



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17 Aug 2011, 2:31 pm

Scientists aren't confused about how the pyramids were built. Here's an explanation:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 104302.htm


The contruction techniques needed do not exceed the technology of the time. And human brains were the same then as they are now. The greatest difference between large scale construction projects then and now is that today we use machines to do the work that was previously done by many, many, many humans over the period of many, many, many years.

This subject is fresh in my head because the Politics, Philosophy and Religion subforum recently had a thread on it:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt170123.html

As you can see, the thread is all about the "ancient aliens built that stuff" theories. I'm in that thread arguing vehemntly against the "alines built it" theory. Somebody else in the thread notes that this sort of skepticism about ancient peoples' ability to built megastructures on their own is based on a Eurocentric bias- an assumption that those ancient (brown) people who never knew post-Newton technology couldn't have figured this out themselves.

I'm going to guess that your autism connection is the thought that perhaps autistic engineers had a hand in the design. And perhaps they did. This wouldn't require that autism used to be more common than it is now. Inventing technology is not the exclusive domain of people on the autism spectrum. However, it is certainly possible and even likely that somewhere on the design teams were autistic men (autistic women would not have been permitted to do that).

edited to add: did I say "Eurocentric bias"? Fnord is right and that was too tame a term. It's racism.



Last edited by Janissy on 17 Aug 2011, 3:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Fnord
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17 Aug 2011, 3:34 pm

To think that ancient Egyptians were so stupid that they needed extraterrestrials to construct their own pyramids - essentially stacks of multi-ton building blocks - is racism, plain and obvious.

It's prejudice on the order of saying, "He's autistic, so we have to help him with everything" whether the person needs help or not.


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17 Aug 2011, 4:15 pm

Uh, no, Fnord. That's not racism; that's saying, "Hmm... they didn't have very advanced technology back then; how did they build the Pyramids?" Saying someone doesn't have advanced technology is NOT the same thing as racism. The Pyramids really are an admirable achievement, and it's no wonder that a few crackpots are resorting to aliens to explain them.

Re. Egypt: Actually, Egypt was a great deal more accepting of disabled people than any other society of their era. In many places, disabled people were relegated to the status of beggars or even killed outright. Not in Egypt. There, they were inventing the first wheelchairs--a cart-like structure. They invented the first prosthetics (mostly to be used after death to "complete" the mummy for the afterlife; but some showed evidence of use during life, including a foot prosthetic evidently used to replace the big toe of a woman who had lost hers, probably due to diabetes). The Egyptians also had a good amount of dwarfism, and even a dwarf deity, Bes. We've found several dwarf mummies--usually achondroplastic dwarfism--who show evidence of having led healthy lives.

So--Well, there's no way of knowing; but it wouldn't be too surprising if there had been a bit of autism in the Egyptian engineers figuring out how to build Pyramids. Egypt, unlike many other places during that time, would have been a place where people with disabilities had a chance at survival and participation in society. Not as good a chance as modern times; but for their time, Egypt was pretty advanced.


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17 Aug 2011, 4:18 pm

The Egyptians had time and people. Given enough of both of them, I think they could've built a lot more than a couple of measly pyramids.

Also, there's no doubt that you have to go outside of Western civilisation to find most of the wonders of the world (though the Greeks did build a few themselves). Stuff like the Pyramids, the Great Wall, Macchu Picchu, Angkor Wat and Chichen Itza were beyond the abilities of the Western world at that time. Though some historians argue that the non-Western world's predisposition towards such architectural grandstands led them to "waste" their energy on building that rather than on conquering the world.


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17 Aug 2011, 4:26 pm

Yeah. The people in Europe at that time were still struggling to survive. No time for Pyramids...


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17 Aug 2011, 7:10 pm

Of perhaps greater importance than engineering skill, when you're talking about vast public works projects that take decades to finish, are the political and organizational skills to keep the project on track.

I have no doubt that most any bright architectural or civil engineering graduate could devise the physical methods necessary to construct the pyramids, but having the organizational skills and the political stability to keep a project going for several generations ... that's the hard part.

And let's not forget the psychological importance of the Egyptian worldview that required the construction of grand tombs for their leaders after their death. Haven't you ever wondered, for instance, why it was that the Egyptians never built something like, say, a hang glider? The theoretical knowledge required is no more than that required to make a paper airplane, which any child can do. In any case, the engineering and knowledge necessary to build a simple glider is certainly far less grand than that required to build a great pyramid.

The reason they didn't, I suppose, is that the ability to fly wasn't part of the Egyptian worldview. It wasn't something required by/for their gods. So it didn't occur to them. Perhaps there were other reasons, as well, but it certainly wasn't because they lacked the skill.



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17 Aug 2011, 7:40 pm

The pyramids were made by people through ingenuity and a lot of hard work.

To suggest otherwise is to demean the people whose lives were spent (wasted, in my opinion) building them.

It was hard work but quite possible for people to have built them.


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17 Aug 2011, 9:08 pm

Give me a lever long enough and strong enough, and I'll build you a pyramid.

I wonder, in five thousand years from now, will our offspring look at the Sears Tower and wonder how we built it? Will the World Trade Center be considered a legend, like Atlantis?


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17 Aug 2011, 9:58 pm

SammichEater wrote:
I wonder, in five thousand years from now, will our offspring look at the Sears Tower and wonder how we built it? Will the World Trade Center be considered a legend, like Atlantis?


Not unless the English language disappears. Daily life is too extensively documented now.



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17 Aug 2011, 10:04 pm

Ancient roman life was documented too. But when their library burned down, all that information was forever lost. If that hadn't have happened, who knows where we could be right now in terms of technology.


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17 Aug 2011, 10:34 pm

I think it's less likely that we'd have our own Alexandria--there are just too many copies of everything so that in another two thousand years, there'll be plenty of things that survive. I think future archeologists will have more trouble sifting through all the irrelevant data than they'll have looking for it in the first place.


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17 Aug 2011, 10:43 pm

The pharoahs wanted pyramids built to honor the gods so they could make it to the next world. They got slaves to design them and build them. It was as easy as 1, 2, 3.



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17 Aug 2011, 11:00 pm

SammichEater wrote:
Ancient roman life was documented too. But when their library burned down, all that information was forever lost. If that hadn't have happened, who knows where we could be right now in terms of technology.


I hardly think one library compares to 50 bazillion daily newspapers, 50 bazillion history textbooks, 50 bazillion internet servers, or 50 bazillion feet of CNN videotape.

And regarding the technology, where do you suppose we'd be? What did the Romans have that the world didn't far surpass by the time of, say, the beginning of Renaissance or so?



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18 Aug 2011, 3:07 am

Stone_Man wrote:
SammichEater wrote:
Ancient roman life was documented too. But when their library burned down, all that information was forever lost. If that hadn't have happened, who knows where we could be right now in terms of technology.


I hardly think one library compares to 50 bazillion daily newspapers, 50 bazillion history textbooks, 50 bazillion internet servers, or 50 bazillion feet of CNN videotape.

And regarding the technology, where do you suppose we'd be? What did the Romans have that the world didn't far surpass by the time of, say, the beginning of Renaissance or so?


Have you seen the Roman and Greek temples? Especially the Greek ones, since the Romans were mostly crap.

The Statue of Zeus, the Colossus, the Temple of Artemis, these are all marvelous constructions. They are just outright beautiful. The detailed reliefs on the various temples are amazing. At the beginning of the Renaissance, the world (and especially Europe) was simply not as far. And in Europe, only the Church surpassed the Greeks' constructions, if only because they were the only ones with money to burn.

I don't think anyone will be particularly impressed with the architectural wonders of the modern day. All these projects have basically devolved into who can build the tallest tower. That's not the way to get into the history books.


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