Claim: Ancient Cultures inherited Structures and Artefacts from Pre-Historic Lost Civilizations with Advanced Manufacturing Capabilities

[SkepticSteve]

A bit of a more entertaining video reminding us that not everything was perfect in ancient Egypt:

 

[yoshy]

A bit of a more entertaining video reminding us that not everything was perfect in ancient Egypt:

Ha, somethings never change

 

[DavidB66]

I've just been reading a memoir by the celebrated/notorious British art forger Shaun Greenhalgh (A Forger's Tale: Confessions of the Bolton Forger, Kindle Edition). In a nefarious career lasting some 40 years before his detection and prosecution, Greenhalgh created imitations or pastiches of an extraordinary range and variety of art works and antiquities, convincing enough to pass examination by leading experts in the relevant fields. These included several Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures.

In the book Greenhalgh discusses the techniques of ancient sculptors, and remarks:

I've read many accounts written by experts of how the ancient Egyptian granite cutters and their descendants would fashion porphyry sculpture for their Roman masters using nothing more than diorite pounders. Banging one rock on another, they would hammer the surface to powder, slowly shaping 20-ton blocks of granite into the likeness of a pharaoh. I'd like to see someone try this. Not just the few powdering blows on a boulder demonstrated by a talking head on a telly programme, but the actual fashioning of the delicate parts of an Egyptian masterpiece, the fine facial features you always see or the internal corners of a quartzite sarcophagus. No one could do that with a rock. It isn't possible. I reckon they used copper wheels powered by some kind of lathe. It was either water-powered or, more likely, a man-powered hamster wheel contraption. I know there is no evidence in archaeology for this idea, but the great products of Egyptian stonework, the fine features and precise undercutting on most of their hardstones – to say nothing of the thin slices used in their goldwork – are just too good to have been achieved by banging one stone on another. So wheel-cutting was surely the way to go.

Greenhalgh, Shaun. A Forger's Tale: Confessions of the Bolton Forger (pp. 332-333). Allen & Unwin. Kindle Edition.

I don't necessarily agree with this, but it does come from someone with relevant practical experience. Greenhalgh presumably understands that the 'copper wheels' would be accompanied by a sufficiently hard abrasive.

 

[Lu Ann Lewellen]

I don't necessarily agree with this, but it does come from someone with relevant practical experience. Greenhalgh presumably understands that the 'copper wheels' would be accompanied by a sufficiently hard abrasive.

Try flint chisels and cutters. Nikolay Vasiutin shows how to carve an eye using flint on granite in this short video:


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQkQwsBhj8I&t=78s

 

[Ann K]

In the book Greenhalgh discusses the techniques of ancient sculptors, and remarks:

"No one could do that with a rock. It isn't possible."

That's an argument from incredulity, a logical fallacy. We have shown plenty of examples that show yes, people COULD do it with a rock, and a skilled craftsman taking all the time he needed could do it very well indeed. I think what he meant was "I am too impatient to do it in a short time, so it couldn't be done". That's a very bad argument.

 

[SpOoKy777]

"No one could do that with a rock. It isn't possible."

That's a forgers ego talking I guess...if your "job" is to make high quality forgeries fast and efficient you need a bit of "I know it all" Not the right guy to ask these questions imo...

 

[Lu Ann Lewellen]

Every time I see "It's Impossible" I think of Christopher Dunn - and 30' circular saws.

 

[Lu Ann Lewellen]

Internal corners? They drilled the sarcophagus with tube drills first, chipped out the cores then finished the corners. Not impossible at all. This short video shows how the corners can be done sans copper:


Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ2bHE7mTi4&pp=ygUZQ2FydmluZyBjb3JuZXIgaW4gZ3Jhbml0ZQ%3D%3D

 

[DavidB66]

They drilled the sarcophagus with tube drills first, chipped out the cores then finished the corners. Not impossible at all.

I agree, but 'tube drills' seem closer to Greenhalgh's 'copper wheel' hypothesis than 'banging one rock on another'. I'm not sure if anyone has actually proposed the latter as a general solution to the puzzle of Egyptian carving. If not, then Greenhalgh was attacking a straw man. But as someone who has actually produced convincing Egyptian antiquities in his back garden shed, he does have a unique perspective on the problem.

 

[Lu Ann Lewellen]

I agree, but 'tube drills' seem closer to Greenhalgh's 'copper wheel' hypothesis than 'banging one rock on another'. I'm not sure if anyone has actually proposed the latter as a general solution to the puzzle of Egyptian carving. If not, then Greenhalgh was attacking a straw man. But as someone who has actually produced convincing Egyptian antiquities in his back garden shed, he does have a unique perspective on the problem.

Denys Stocks found the mark of a misdirected drill in Khufu's sarcophagus. He was able to calculate the size of the drill and the pattern of drilling using Petrie's measurement of the curved mark on the eastern inside wall of Khufu's sarcophagus.

M.Z. Goneim discovered that Sekhemkhet's calcite sarcophagus had been tubular drilled from one end, rather than from its long, top surface, as in Khufu's sarcophagus.

The use of stone mauls for pounding calcite, granite, basalt, quartzite or grey-wacke from the interiors of sarcophagi is impracticable: the force of the blows would soon have cracked the already shaped stone blocks. The use of flint chisels and punches would have taken far too long to remove such a large mass of stone. Therefore, Egyptian craftworkers employed the copper tubular drill for hollowing Sekhemkhet's calcite sarcophagus, a tool that had served them well since Nagada II times for hollowing the hard stone vessels, and drilling the holes in their lug handles.

Stocks, Denys A.. Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology (p. 161). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Drilling and sawing experiments were carried out by Stocks and his team at Aswan. There are many examples of tube drills in use in Egyptian wall paintings but none of "copper wheels" AFAIK.

 

[Ravi]

A youtube channel by the name of "CreativeAbility" uploaded a video recently, showing how they make stone, marble vases. It looks quite obvious that the same method must have been used also in the ancient times, to produce at least some of the vases and other concentric stone artefacts. Below I made a few screenshots of highlights in the video. The use of metal cutters here, is of course not what ancient Egyptians had. But perhaps a very hard stone, cut at a right angle and rather sharp could have done the job? The lathe is barely going at speed, showing you don't need high speed lathes.

 

[Scaramanga]

The key claim is, that these structures and artifacts were not manufactured by these ancient cultures self, but instead merely inherited from lost pre-historic civilizations with advanced manufacturing capabilities.

The problem is that there is no trace of those alleged advanced civilisations other than them allegedly 'helping' the noobs along either directly or via some inherited technology. That immediately raises suspicion. Why has nobody ever found the advanced worktools ? When we look through the ruins of Pompeii we can see worktools all over the place....sometimes even lost in foundations. If you watch a program like Time Team, you can see just how messy people are with discarded stuff. And yet, there is not a trace anywhere of advanced cutting tools from ten or twenty thousand years ago. I find it impossible that a new civilisation could have 'inherited' structures and yet not a trace can be found of the alleged tools that made them.

And that is the strongest possible clue that the Egyptians, etc, actually made stuff themselves...that they had various tricks and work-arounds for doing so...and that they did not require the assistance of space brothers or inherited stuff from Atlantis.

 

[Scaramanga]

They claim that the manufacturing precision of of the surfaces makes the use of hand tools highly unlikely and suggest that an advanced manufacturing technique was put to use (begins at 16:51) :

I recall my chagrin when my brother doubted that a beautiful and perfect wooden bowl that had been in the family possession for over 50 years was actually made....by me...at school at the tender age of 8 or 9.

Making it was actually easy, with a lathe. The 4 bolt holes where the wood was attached were covered up with felt, hiding the fact that it was machined. The curves in the bowl were easy to create, with extra pressure on some areas. And hollowing out the bowl was easy too. And for the final touch, the use of sandpaper and then several layers of wax create a perfect surface and further cover up the machining.

The whole process was relatively easy.....could very likely have been done on a foot driven lathe by some ancient rather than an electric one, and the end result is perfect symmetry and doesn't look as though it has been anywhere near a machine.

 

[Ann K]

@Scaramanga , as a dedicated Time Team fan (I once wanted to be an archaeologist until I learned it was going to involve a lot of pick and shovel work), I always enjoy their experimental archaeology segments, where they try to reproduce artifacts or techniques using the same kind of tools that would have been available to the original population of a site.

 

[Scaramanga]

@Scaramanga , as a dedicated Time Team fan (I once wanted to be an archaeologist until I learned it was going to involve a lot of pick and shovel work), I always enjoy their experimental archaeology segments, where they try to reproduce artifacts or techniques using the same kind of tools that would have been available to the original population of a site.

I'm always surprised, on Time Team, just how often they find all manner of odds and ends at excavation sites....as if nobody in history ever really bothered to clean up a site before laying new foundations for a building on top of an old one. But our ancestors being messy is often what leads to the best findings.

 

[Mendel]

I'm always surprised, on Time Team, just how often they find all manner of odds and ends at excavation sites....as if nobody in history ever really bothered to clean up a site before laying new foundations for a building on top of an old one. But our ancestors being messy is often what leads to the best findings.

There's a meme going around about people losing their 10mm nuts. It's not just the ancestors!

 

[Ravi]

I came across a a very recent video, and here is the description:

Manhattan businessman and arts patron Adam Young gives a first ever presentation on the Pre-dynastic Egyptian vases he has purchased and scanned. His self-funded investigation has borne extraordinary fruit in the form of global interest in the most sublime artifacts of pre-antiquity.

I haven't got time yet to watch it, so I cannot give you my opinion. However, it is related to Christopher Dunn and UnchartedX, so please observe with care.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k0E9j0nsgw

 

[Ann K]

@Ravi, I'll look at it later, but unless he provides some proof that these are "pre-dynastic" (and perhaps that they are representative of others of the period, which we are pretty sure they're not), no amount of "look how precise these are!" is meaningful.

 

[Ravi]

@Ravi, I'll look at it later, but unless he provides some proof that these are "pre-dynastic" (and perhaps that they are representative of others of the period, which we are pretty sure they're not), no amount of "look how precise these are!" is meaningful.

I actually just now finished watching the video (skipped the last 20min). It is indeed not giving us more information, or rather "evidence" of the claims it is made far far earlier than the Dynastic period. Alex also contradicts himself every now and then.
I would say, the presentation is well done, but a lot of the conclusions made, is based on nothing.