"I personally can't conceive of how one might built this, and I must be a million times smarter than people 4500 years ago, ergo people didn't build this." is how the Ancient Aliens theory always sounds to me.
There's a ton of people that, for some reason, just can't grok that humans have been largely behaviorally and biologically identical for the past 200k years.
The average ancient roman plebeian's life would not look dramatically different from ours today, minus technology of course. They worked a day job, ate at thermopoliums (basically fast food), lived in crowded apartment complexes with various forms of slum lords, deal with high rent prices, and roman graffiti is littered with complaints about politicians, sports teams, and the rising cost of living.
With the pyramids, we have the Wadi al-Jarf papyri, a detailed logistics logbook documenting the teams moving the stones for the great pyramids, along side payroll records much like any other spreadsheet you'll find on someone's corporate computer today.
We are not so different from our ancient ancestors at all.
It has always been my understanding that if talking about homo sapiens sapiens: then if you could „snatch“ a newborn from 200k years ago and raise it just like any other human baby today, there is nothing in terms of biology etc. that would stop said baby from becoming an engineer, astronaut, formula one race driver, lawyer, programmer, or CEO (or any other modern profession for that matter).
Never read up if that pet theory of mine has any merit, though.
A couple years ago I realized that I had somewhat subconsciously made the same assumption. The thing that snapped me out of it was my awe in watching Clickspring (YT) try to recreate the Antikythera Mechanism. That device's complexity and craftsmanship is proof to me that despite the lack of technology, there were some astonishingly smart and resourceful people living thousands of years ago.
The Obelisk at the Vatican weighs in at 360 tons. And was moved from Egypt to Rome by the Romans around 40AD. And then moved to it's present location in the 1586. The Romans moved at least 8 Egyptian Obelisks to Rome and also commissioned a couple.
The only thing really amazing about the pyramids is how many couple of ton blocks they carved out and transported. It's around 250 blocks a day for 25 years.
A thing of note, the Nile banks have been one the most fertile arable land around the whole mediterranean, that's why it was invaluable to the roman empire. Why it matters is that only in a place where you have very fertile land can you afford to have sooooo many people not working in agriculture and feed them to work for your tyrannical pet project
There is even a controversial theory that individual human intelligence peaked around 3000 years ago.
> Crabtree bases his argument on the fact that, for more than 99 percent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities, which has led to big-brained humans. Since the development of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effectively stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical intelligence genes.
There are ideas that ancient human thinking was very different and primitive compared to modern. For example (and others):
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976)
In the half century that has passed since the publishing of that book, plenty of work has been done to say that ancient human thinking wasn't primitive, especially the ones that made the pyramids 4,600 years ago, such as the Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids by Mark Lehner and Pierre Tallet (2022) which alludes to the minds of competent and intelligent humans
probably this is an effect of a much more simple environment and tasks in the past: Sleep, hunt and not been hunted, eat, reproduce. the minds seems simpler, but is apparent.
We live in a more complex world, this produce someting more complex, culture, ideas, knowledge, tasks, technology, craps.. but basic intelligence i think is the same (if not better in the past, less "pollution")
If I was to sum up Jaynes' most relevant idea, I'd say it is that language is a technological advancement that evolved to handle more abstract and powerful concepts over time. Ten thousand years ago, humans were biologically the same as today, but their tool of language wasn't advanced enough to effectively communicate or contemplate some concepts, and it led to a reduced inner monologue and explicit self-awareness.
When I first read it, I remember thinking that this was the most interesting book I've read that is probably wrong.
I don't have read jaines. To me the language was different yes, but the mind is another thing, but the two are cleary related.
I think humans need (and create) more concepts, more complex/different idea, to grasp/describe a more complex world around, but the mind is equally capable now as 50k-years ago.
Probably in the past minds can contemplate things we are not more aware today, who know?
is not all about rational and scientific thinking, is not more or less advanced, is simply different, and in the past humans needed a quite different set of ideas and tools than today.
Just travel to Papua-NewGuinea and check with some tribe in a lost valley, straigh from Neolythic, some does not have a concept of "3", but children can learn arithmetic as everyone else, they can contemplate every concept we have, given the right path.
I think the gap here variation. Yes, people living 50,000 years ago were likely quite similar to _some_ people alive today, just probably not very similar to the types of people who are able to peacefully sit around on the internet and read history books for pleasure, who would most likely ask that question.
Romans, huh? Many of them were slaves, they believed they could learn the future by looking at the patterns of birds in flight, a Roman's bloodline was very important to the Roman's importance. You can take "behaviorally identical" too far, ideas got better over time, people in the past had bad ideas.
If genuine, I'm puzzled. In the current world we have a tremendous amount of people who hold various superstitious beliefs as well as spend tremendous amount of time on their genealogy. And nepotism never went away. I agree those are "bad ideas", but don't see how they differentiate us from people 5k years ago?
I guess I got downvoted for not supplying very persuasive examples. The point is, cleverness is having good ideas-about-ideas, and these have obviously improved over time, so people in the past were obviously not so clever.
I could point at all the self-help books that promise to improve the way you think, or Wikipedias list of fallacies, but I don't those are great examples either. It's frustrating that I can't make a simple point just because it needs more research. I hoped people would find better examples themselves.
I don't think your word "tremendous" works, I think superstition declined and values improved, but it's hard to nail this down for people who are keen to disagree. Does that include you? Why?
Atheists range from 4-6% in USA, I think less than 1% in India, to a nice round 0 percent in many other countries where they'd basically be beaten up for this. I think word "tremendous" is appropriate when we are talking about 95+%
Outside of the "so mainstream and prevalent we don't even consider it" superstitions (which, remember, were all the historical ones we may dismiss now, thousand years later), we have horoscope and astrology, psychics, and people who think wearing same socks will help them on a winning streak, and everybody hesitant to talk about good or bad outcomes less they "jinx it". Maybe you're from Germany or Scandinavia and your daily experience is different?
But again, the thread started about biological differences and I will agree that there are little to none between ancient Egyptians and modern humans.
In terms of cultural values, sanctity of life, freedoms and poverty and lifestyle, I do think some things have improved. We can debate numbers as to how much.
Understand that as a Canadian, and not knowing where you're from, you unfortunately find me at a cynical time as we watch our southern neighbour work so very very hard to dismantle much of the progress we are discussing here very every effectively, so it's just difficult to put one's mind in historically optimistic mindset :-/
Romans had educated intellectuals who had some progressive and scientific ideas, and the less educated masses who had less progressive and educated ideas. This seems to describe today's world well. And we still LOVE to attack the "intellectual elite" for having progressive, scientific ideas.
Still sounds a lot like humans today. Many are still slaves, many believe they can learn the future by reading cards with funny pictures on them, for some bloodline is very important, as is race.
I don't think we are meaningfully different at all. The same types and groups of people and social structures all still exist today. I suppose the big difference is those of us who are well adjusted know that racism is not good, and tarot cards are meaningless woo woo. But there were also such skeptics back then too.
I don't understand the downvote, it's like "nooo, their ideas were exactly as good as the ones we have today, humans don't learn over time, how dare you imply we used to be stupider, it's sacrilege".
So I object to this weird article of faith every time it comes up, we can't have been exactly as sensible and exactly as clever in the past as we are today, it doesn't make any sense to say that. But it's somehow become right-on to say that it's so, as if denying it is a prejudice like timeism or something. It obviously matters to some world view, equality maybe?
We have access to different data points today. But the way I read the original post is that human mind as such did not meaningful change. If you took a Roman or Egyptian embryo from 5k years ago and incubated it today, you'd have a modern human. The fact that many people back then had crazy ideas, is orthogonal to the biological argument at hand - and that's before we look at amount of people with crazy ideas today, many of which are largely the same.
Basically I think we have to pick a lane on whether we are talking biology, vs culture, vs knowledge and accumulated data.
Yes, but I don't know why we'd be talking about biology in the first place, unless everybody's going around assessing everybody else a biologically stupid or smart. (If so, where do they think the smart ones get their good ideas from, are those ideas supposed to be inborn? Or exuded from a strong and genetically healthy idea-gland?)
But, I'm not saying that humans haven't learned anything, but that cognitively we haven't changed. A roman citizen has the exact same brain capacity to reason and adapt as we do today. There is zero separation from ancient human vs. modern human in that aspect.
You are conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence. That roman looking at bird entrails to predict the future was using the exact same pattern-recognition ability we use today to look at data visualizations, or trend graphs.
You could go back in time, steal an ancient roman baby, and raise them in today's year and they would be no different from you or I.
I agree with the "steal an ancient roman baby" premise. The "roman citizen" example is not as strong. Cognitive ability is not just genetics. The grown-up roman would be missing a lot of advantages during their upbringing that weren't available back then. Also, limiting it to just "citizens" means limiting it to their upper class.
Compared to Roman times, we've had pretty big advances in nutrition, healthcare, education, and widespread middle class wealth. It's not unreasonable to infer that these would have an impact on cognitive ability similar to the effect they've had on life expectancy.
That being said, there's definitely a present-ist bias, as the McSweeney's article does a good job mocking. I do believe their best thinkers were as good as our best thinkers.
Yes, of course that's right. But I thought you were the one conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence, when you said "behaviorally". Behaviors being due to ideas, not nature (I don't much rate nature's effect on smarts anyway).
Maybe I need to spell this distinction out next time it comes up, which will be the next ancient history thread, probably. I guess the endless repetition of "they were just as smart as we were you know!" is in order to counteract an unstated idea that the ancients were some other species, like orangutans in bronze armor, I don't know. Maybe it's common to vaguely think that about them? But this gratuitous counter-point should be on a strictly genetic basis, or else you'd be accidentally denying that ideas improve.
My original comment was more along those lines, but then I did a quick Wiki refresher on Chariots of the Gods (possibly the origin of the popular "Ancient Aliens" push), and noted that the author included Stonehenge among his examples, so I changed course.
Ancient Aliens conflates two very different ideas.
The show’s core argument is that ancient civilizations were more advanced than we give them credit for. That may be true, but “more advanced” does not mean they had superior technology or help from aliens. It can simply mean they had technical knowledge, methods, or craftsmanship that we have since lost or forgotten.
Elon Musk has made a similar point about the US space program. We landed on the moon more than 50 years ago, but in some ways we now have to relearn how to do it (because we forgot how). That does not mean we had better technology in the 1960s, and it certainly does not mean aliens were involved. It means knowledge, systems, expertise, and institutional capability can fade over time. And that doesn't mean aliens were involved (as the tvshow would make you believe).
> It means knowledge, systems, expertise, and institutional capability can fade over time
This has also been happening since ancient times. Famously, how to make roman concrete was lost after the fall of the empire and Europe did not reinvent high quality concrete until much later in the 18th century. They also lost entire industrial-scale manufacturing pipelines for pottery and had a regression back to crude, hand-shaped pottery.
Turns out we humans have been dealing with the same human problems for hundreds of thousands of years.
This reminds me of Gall’s Law. You cannot create a complex system, you must create a simple system and improve it over time.
The issue arises when you get so many iterations in, you’ve forgotten the process. Any catastrophic event can mean you won’t be able to create the silicon chip or airplanes and so much other technology.
Maybe I’m wrong and people and books do exist that can explain the process and human might would succeed.
A semiconductor company couldn't get their second plant to work until they tore it down and set it up again in an exact copy of the floor layout of the first plant. They don't know why.
Have we actually forgotten how to land to the moon? That sounds very fishy, I’m pretty skeptical that’s not the case, that was done at a time where we had good records and still have access to them. And it’s close enough to current time that people who worked on it are still alive (not all of course). Coming from musk makes me believe that’s not true, he’s far from a reliable narrator
Many of the manufacturing processes used to make the Apollo spacecraft were not followed in the production floor - and nobody wrote those changes down. That's one well-known example of Apollo-era knowledge lost, there are a few others if you seriously care to DDG them.
Okay, but dgallow at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48589728 asked "Have we actually forgotten how to land to the moon?", not "can we build a Saturn V rocket which is fundamentally the same as the ones from nearly 60 years ago?"
Reading about the design for the F-1B engine gave me some understanding of the issue.
The F-1B was meant as a modernized version of the Apollo Saturn F-1 main engine.
The original design used extensive hand-welding, and the specific details of how to handle tricky situations likely not included in the manufacturing processes details because it was simply expected from an expert welder of the time.
That sort of expertise is far less common now. But rather than try to find those welders, the designers of the new engine used newer methods like additive manufacturing to replace welding entirely.
The old F-1 engine used a lot of complicated mechanical control methods. The F-1B used computer controls.
The new design had fewer components, was lighter, and was designed for a 15% performance boost over the original design.
So, sure, perhaps we can't exactly build a new Saturn V rocket following the 1969 blueprints, due to missing production floor changes. But we would never try because we are not limited to 1960s building methods if we wanted to use the Saturn V design as the basis for going back to the moon.
2. "Not far" is the difference between "land humans on the surface of the moon and return them safely to Earth" and not doing that. Some of this stuff was unbelievably lucky, go read about the F1 engine baffles - getting that right was pure stupid luck as much as it was engineered.
And there were literally hundreds of these examples - across five different space vehicles and the interfaces between them.
Yes, it's absolutely a lot of work, cost, and risk to design and qualify a new rocket for human spaceflight from scratch. Especially if you've let all your institutional knowledge drift away in the meantime.
I just don't think that comes close to meeting the bar of "lost technology" in the sense that term is used by the extraterrestrial pyramid theorists (i.e., the manipulation of fundamental physical forces allowing the blocks to be levitated into place).
There are two parts to manufacturing technology: The written knowledge of what to build, and the process knowledge of all the gotchas and tricks and skill that people experienced in their craft rarely write down. (In many cases the great craftspeople with the knowledge are not great teachers or writers). Manufacturing an object is not like compiling code, where if you pick the right inputs and machines you get the same output. The actual process of building is so full of domain knowledge and variability that ten different people following the same written instructions can get wildly different results.
Derek from SmarterEveryDay ran into this when trying to get a product manufactured in the US and shared his experience: https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY?t=1386
It has been a common meme within NASA since before SpaceX was founded.
The hard part of putting humans on the moon and bringing them back safely is not a problem if basic scientific knowlege, it is more an engineering challenge in an incredibly complex and bespoke domain. It is the know how that this component from this manufacturer has this kind of failure rate under these conditions, but when interacting with this other component under these conditions the failure rate is much higher, but that can be mitigated if we apply this kind of technique, but only if the temperature stays within X....
In the same way we've forgotten how to write Windows 1.0 programs. Sure, we can work it out again - specially with modern reverse engineering tools. But that's the point - we'd have to work it out again.
This is a strawman argument, their real one is: "These megalithic structures would be tremendously difficult for anyone to build even today with all of our modern technology, and yet they did it hundreds of times before even inventing the wheel, in several places across the world."
It is a weird argument because we totally could build a Great Pyramid replica. Ships and trains hauling stone and tower cranes plopping them into place. We are really good at moving things and lifting them. It would probably be the quarries that be the bottleneck.
If wanted it in concrete, would be faster. Or could do it in steel or steel/concrete with some interior space (Luxor in Las Vegas is size of smaller pyramid).
It took $16M in 2020 dollars, a special boat built just for this transportation, and five years to complete the whole relocation process.
The mainstream argument is that ancient Egyptians were able to transport this same monument hundreds of miles from the quarry to Luxor with no wheels or cranes, just reed boats, sleds, and ropes. They did this hundreds or thousands of times, sometimes with granite blocks twice the size of this one.
> If wanted it in concrete, would be faster. Or could do it in steel or steel/concrete with some interior space (Luxor in Las Vegas is size of smaller pyramid).
There are a lot of ways the ancient Egyptians could have done this more easily as well. They didn’t have to transport granite from a quarry hundreds of miles away, they could have used softer stones from nearby quarries. They didn’t have to carve things from single-piece blocks, they could have broken it up into many smaller blocks or even bricks. They did everything the harder way, with the oldest constructions being the most difficult and precise, suggesting that there’s a lot we still don’t understand about their motivations, abilities, or the timeline.
Wait until you hear about "I don't remember leaving my phone in the toilets" ergo "There must be alternative parallel timelines we regularly jump to and from"
The average ancient roman plebeian's life would not look dramatically different from ours today, minus technology of course. They worked a day job, ate at thermopoliums (basically fast food), lived in crowded apartment complexes with various forms of slum lords, deal with high rent prices, and roman graffiti is littered with complaints about politicians, sports teams, and the rising cost of living.
With the pyramids, we have the Wadi al-Jarf papyri, a detailed logistics logbook documenting the teams moving the stones for the great pyramids, along side payroll records much like any other spreadsheet you'll find on someone's corporate computer today.
We are not so different from our ancient ancestors at all.