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by m0llusk 1540 days ago
Some pretty wild conclusions come up, but much of the base material is compelling. Extremely ancient megalithic stone constructions can be found world wide. While it is certainly not the case that "scholars are silent" as asserted here, there is still no particularly well accepted explanation. And it could be coincidence that some of the earliest societies built with large blocks with minimal ornament. It is unfortunate that crackpots dominate the discussion and so hamper reasonable exploration of the subject, but the idea that some extremely old human societies built monuments in this way is not actually all that radical.

And the cyclopean thing is an odd tangent, but does have a pretty well accepted modern explanation. Some fossilized skulls have extremely prominent nasal and sinus cavities that have long led amateur investigators to conclude that there were one eyed giants in the past. This is most likely nothing but a basic error of anatomical analysis. It is difficult to correctly understand fossilized skulls if you don't have a reasonable grasp of the kind of skulls that creatures living today have.

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> the idea that some extremely old human societies built monuments in this way is not actually all that radical

Since the stones are still there for anyone to walk up and touch, it's pretty much incontrovertible. Go to Mallorca and you can find megalithic towns that date from thousands of years before Rome, which had to have come from a culture with some degree of technology because they were able to sail there and colonize it in the first place.

That said, you don't need giants to explain it. In Tarragona the foundations of the fortress wall are made of tight fitting stone blocks the size of a car that were quarried and moved hundreds of feet up the hill by regular Homo Sapiens Romans.