The Flat Earth Society
Other Discussion Boards => Science & Alternative Science => Topic started by: Yaakov ben Avraham on December 15, 2013, 11:35:11 PM
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Just a curious question. I am reading a few of Erich von Daniken's books. For those who don't know, von Daniken is a Swiss, originally a hotelier by profession, whose claim to fame is his amateur archaeological work, & the subsequent 30-40 books he has written. In these, the 1st being 'Chariots of the Gods' in '68, he proposes to have evidence that 'earth has been visited repeatedly by advanced aliens from other worlds.' (from the blurb of 'CotG'). Athough his theories are rejected by mainstream scientists, he has become a gadfly to archaeologists & a very wealthy man by virtue of his books. I was curious to see if any of you had read his stuff, & if so, what you thought. Do let me know.
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I haven't read any of his works myself, but I recall with some amusement John Davis talking about them and how you had to read between the lines or something to get the full experience.
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Just watch Ancient Aliens on the History Channel and you will get a good idea of what he believes.
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Yeah, Ancient Aliens is really out there. Half of it is plausible to me, but the other half is just reading way too much into things to me.
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Ancient Aliens is the worst show ever. Half of it is pure lies. The other half is mistaken information. They make their money by idiots not knowing which information are lies and which is them just being dumb.
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W. Raymond Drake, one of the very best authors on ancient technology:
http://www.amazon.com/W.-Raymond-Drake/e/B001H6J32M
His first masterpiece on the subject was published four years earlier than Erich Von Däniken's bestseller Chariots of the Gods.
Then we have Robert Charroux...
Charroux was a pioneer of the theory of ancient astronauts, publishing at least six non-fiction works in this genre in the last decade of his life, including One Hundred Thousand Years of Man's Unknown History (1963, 1970), Forgotten Worlds (1973), Masters of the World (1974), The Gods Unknown (1974) and Legacy of the Gods (1974).
The influence that Charroux's first work (in its 1963 version) had on Erich Von Däniken's first books (ca. 1966), as well as the influence that Von Däniken's early books had on Charroux, is widely appreciated, but Von Däniken seems to have been equally familiar with an earlier French work, The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (1960), which is likely to have been a direct inspiration for both Charroux and Von Däniken.Charroux's publisher contacted Von Däniken's in March 1968 concerning evidence of plagiarism, with the result that later printings of Chariots of the Gods and Return to the Stars at least mentioned Charroux in the bibliography.
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Charroux/e/B001K7NMWU
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I've heard of Charroux, & the issue of von Daniken's possible plagiarism. I've often wondered whether von Daniken was acknowledging plagiarism, or just giving in to make the matter go away. W/o having read Charroux, I don't know, of course. I have also heard of 'Morning of the Magicians'. Sandokhan, what do you think of von Daniken's (et al) theories?
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Ancient Aliens is the worst show ever. Half of it is pure lies. The other half is mistaken information. They make their money by idiots not knowing which information are lies and which is them just being dumb.
Yes.
I took an archaeological class that was specifically made to debunk all the bad information, conspiracy theories, and paranormal fanatics out there.
A lot of people just don't want to believe that human beings are fully capable of making amazing structures with nothing more than simple tools and hard work. I mean, there is a recorded image of how the Egyptians made the Great Pyramid and still so many think it's a complete mystery. Daniken thinks it came out of nowhere when there are well known failures prior to the success. It's really upsetting.
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Rooster, now you've got me curious. I've never seen the video. How did the Great Pyramid get built? & no, I'm not being a wise-ass, I'm genuinely curious. Human prehistory is not a strong point of mine. My degrees were in history, which implies codification in some way. Archaeology, on the other hand, deals w/ stuff that hasn't been explored & codified. So, do tell, please.
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I've seen several theories successfully tested on small scale pyramids (3-4 layers), but that doesn't necessarily mean that they scale to several hundred layers. That and the logistics of quarrying, shaping and moving a million or more blocks in a relatively short time span does seem rather daunting even by modern standards, let alone ancient.
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Rooster, now you've got me curious. I've never seen the video. How did the Great Pyramid get built? & no, I'm not being a wise-ass, I'm genuinely curious. Human prehistory is not a strong point of mine. My degrees were in history, which implies codification in some way. Archaeology, on the other hand, deals w/ stuff that hasn't been explored & codified. So, do tell, please.
It's not prehistory. If it was written down it is recorded history. My degree is also in history, I'm surprised you don't know Ancient Egypt qualifies as "ancient history" and not prehistory.
I didn't say anything about a video. When I say "recorded" I mean there is a drawn image from Ancient Egypt that was made for their records. But there are images of them using rollers to move large structures up ramps.
There are some good documentaries with people recreating the pyramid using both the roller method and the sled method if you're interested.
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I've seen several theories successfully tested on small scale pyramids (3-4 layers), but that doesn't necessarily mean that they scale to several hundred layers. That and the logistics of quarrying, shaping and moving a million or more blocks in a relatively short time span does seem rather daunting even by modern standards, let alone ancient.
Maybe so, but it's how they paid "taxes". Every citizen was required to build massive structures in yearly shifts for the pharaoh. There is also a quarry of the limestone right across the Nile from where the pyramids were built and where they have found ancient quarrying equipment. And you are not motivated by fanatical religious beliefs to build monuments.
The only people who believe Erich von Daniken are people who have not properly researched the material.
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He's right. The records of Ancient Egypt, though sparser than we should like, are present. I amend my previous statement & stand corrected. Needless to say, my work was done in British history. That having been said, if I understand von Daniken correctly, he is suggesting that the sheer scale of things would have been beyond human endeavour. Is there an answer to that? & yes, I would be interested in those documentaries. Can you link to them?
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He's right. The records of Ancient Egypt, though sparser than we should like, are present. I amend my previous statement & stand corrected. Needless to say, my work was done in British history. That having been said, if I understand von Daniken correctly, he is suggesting that the sheer scale of things would have been beyond human endeavour. Is there an answer to that? & yes, I would be interested in those documentaries. Can you link to them?
Why would a large community of people taking turns to constantly build through-out the year be beyond human endeavor?
It's not the video itself, but an article written of it.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids.html
"In a NOVA experiment we found that 12 men could pull a one-and-a-half-ton block over a slick surface with great ease."
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Greetings, Rooster:
Having read the article at PBS.org, I must admit, it gives one a great deal to think about. I wish there was more, though, than the one article. I'm still having a hard time grasping the idea that 36,000 men could manage to put up that stupendous of an edifice in 20 years. Mind you, I am not saying that von Daniken's theories are necessarily any more accurate. What I am saying is that I don't know. Do you have any more information on the subject? Seriously, I am not trying to be a troll. I would like very much to get more information on the subject, as it has always been one of interest to me.
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Greetings, Rooster:
Having read the article at PBS.org, I must admit, it gives one a great deal to think about. I wish there was more, though, than the one article. I'm still having a hard time grasping the idea that 36,000 men could manage to put up that stupendous of an edifice in 20 years. Mind you, I am not saying that von Daniken's theories are necessarily any more accurate. What I am saying is that I don't know. Do you have any more information on the subject? Seriously, I am not trying to be a troll. I would like very much to get more information on the subject, as it has always been one of interest to me.
You could Google it or buy some academic books on the subject.
There's solid evidence in that article so I'm not really sure what you're having trouble with. Maybe I could help you out if you had more specific questions than general disbelief.
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Greetings, Rooster: I shall be rereading the article, & tomorrow, when I have access to wifi on my computer, I shall Google the matter. One question that comes to mind though, is, how would you provision such a large group of people? Assuming 36, 000 for a peak work season of 4 months, & 3,000 the rest of the year for 25 yrs, would the land be able to support them all?
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Greetings, Rooster: I shall be rereading the article, & tomorrow, when I have access to wifi on my computer, I shall Google the matter. One question that comes to mind though, is, how would you provision such a large group of people? Assuming 36, 000 for a peak work season of 4 months, & 3,000 the rest of the year for 25 yrs, would the land be able to support them all?
Fair question, but I bet it's similar to the way they fed all large groups of workers for their many ambitious projects.
I know that at least for later projects there were entire villages set up just for the workers with new farms for their food.
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It certainly is an interesting topic, & one that von Daniken mentions in 'The Eyes of the Sphinx', where he discusses the difficulty w/ provisioning the workmen w/ just 1 vegetable, namely, the onion. Why he chose that crop in particular I don't recall. But he used the sheer number of onions you would need to provide the workmen with, & the difficulty/impossibility of doing it, to extrapolate to how hard it would be to get enough food essential to the Egyptian diet, to more or less confirm that doing such would be impossible, or nearly so. Onions are 1, not essential. One could eliminate them from the diet & suffer no ill effects. 2, one needs only a very small number to meet one's wish for them. If von Daniken was right, & obtaining sufficient amounts for our onion munching friends is difficult or impossible, how much moreso foods the intake of which is essential, & in much larger amounts. Well, there you are. My work is cut out for me.
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http://www.scribd.com/doc/36694833/Zecharia-Sitchin-The-Wars-of-Gods-and-Men-3rd-Book-of-Earth-Chronicles
figure 42 a and b, pg 141
It shows exactly who built the Gizeh Pyramid.
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It certainly is an interesting topic, & one that von Daniken mentions in 'The Eyes of the Sphinx', where he discusses the difficulty w/ provisioning the workmen w/ just 1 vegetable, namely, the onion. Why he chose that crop in particular I don't recall. But he used the sheer number of onions you would need to provide the workmen with, & the difficulty/impossibility of doing it, to extrapolate to how hard it would be to get enough food essential to the Egyptian diet, to more or less confirm that doing such would be impossible, or nearly so. Onions are 1, not essential. One could eliminate them from the diet & suffer no ill effects. 2, one needs only a very small number to meet one's wish for them. If von Daniken was right, & obtaining sufficient amounts for our onion munching friends is difficult or impossible, how much moreso foods the intake of which is essential, & in much larger amounts. Well, there you are. My work is cut out for me.
Does he have a source for this onion theory? Cause Daniken completely makes things up all the time.
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To be honest, Rooster, I'm not sure. I'd have to re-read the book, which I fully intend to do. I'll keep everyone informed as to where I'm @ w/ my reading in both conventional & more exotic stuff.
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I'm a little surprised that you just kinda take him at his word without checking on his sources. As a historian you should know that you need to get as first-hand as possible and check your facts.
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I agree. That is why I started this thread, to see if other people had info on him that I didn't. I am only now reading his stuff closely. The first time I read Chariots & Sphinx, I read both very quickly. So, no, don't think I'm just taking his word for things.
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Well, as per your point, Rooster, I checked a few of the 6 books of von Daniken that I have (mind you, I've only read 2, & those quickly). They all have bibliographies, & some of the later ones do have chapter notes. I'm rereading Chariots right now, his 1st book, which has no notes, just a bibliography. Apparently, he eventually learned how to do more honest research. I'll keep everyone advised. I shall continue to read von Daniken, but I shall also read more orthodox answers to questions as well. Its very sloppy to write a book presenting a controversial thesis w/o notes!
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Well, as per your point, Rooster, I checked a few of the 6 books of von Daniken that I have (mind you, I've only read 2, & those quickly). They all have bibliographies, & some of the later ones do have chapter notes. I'm rereading Chariots right now, his 1st book, which has no notes, just a bibliography. Apparently, he eventually learned how to do more honest research. I'll keep everyone advised. I shall continue to read von Daniken, but I shall also read more orthodox answers to questions as well. Its very sloppy to write a book presenting a controversial thesis w/o notes!
Still depends on his sources and what in context he is using the information. Anyone can take one sentence out of a book and turn it to their advantage.
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Very true. I would hope that he's more honest than that, as one expects when one reviews footnotes, but you are correct that shoddy work happens alot. You are evidently less naive than I am. *GRINS WRYLY* I recall the highly exacting standards that I was expected to meet when I wrote my MA thesis. Shoddy scholarship would not have been tolerated, as I am sure was the case for you as well. It is still hard for me to believe that someone would willfully deceive others. Be ignorant, yes, & open their yap when they would do best to stay silent, sure. We've probably all made asses of ourselves once or twice in life. It happens. But to knowingly deceive others is beyond me. I can't imagine misusing data knowingly to further a goal that was fundamentally indefensible. Its one thing to be wrong. That happens. Its ok to be wrong. Hell, its ok to look like an ass, if you're honest about it. It is NOT ok to lie or cheat your way toward a goal, even if the goal is laudable. I know he's got a checkered past. I just am not
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certain how checkered. I have to review more of his stuff to be able to evaluate him overall.
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Look at Daniken's past. He has been arrested for fraud before.
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Yes, I believe it had to do w/ taking out credit in the name of the hotel he managed & then using it to fund his research. He was fined & sentenced to 3 yrs, of which he did 1, & was then released on remand to keep the peace for the remaining 2, which he did.
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Greetings. I've been able to get hold of an old copy of von Daniken's 2nd book, 'Gods from Outer Space' (published in the UK as as 'Return to the Stars'). I shall read that now I'm done w/ 'Chariots'. Also, I'm getting a gift card to Barnes & Noble for a late Hanukkah gift, & should be able to get a few of his books then as well. He makes an interesting case, though I'm not sure how valid his argument is. 1 point though. Where did the Egyptians get the wood for the rollers used to build the pyramids? Each cylinder would only have lasted a short time under that weight, & Egypt is not & was not a land plentiful in trees.
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That's true, but Egyptians still had wood in a lot of their buildings it's just believed to come from somewhere else.
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They would have had to import ALOT of wood to make the endless number of rollers & ramp supports & so-forth. & once it arrives @ the coast, it has to be transported up the Nile. Egyptians did not have the horse & cart. The river would have been a mess of barges transporting foodstuffs, wood, & God knows what else! Not a very practical environment in which to build the largest structure in the known world. Understand, I'm not trying to be snide. I genuinely want answers to this. It has my curiosity going now.
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But the river is how they transported everything. What makes you think it would be a mess? And why is it a countless amount of wood? How do you know how long the rollers lasted?
Daniken makes the mistake of underestimating ancient culture. He asks questions as if these things were impossible and pulls crap out of nowhere like the builders just eating onions.
Everything he brings up has already been asked and answered and he acts like it's all a secret.
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Look at Daniken's past. He has been arrested for fraud before.
But was he ever convicted of fraud? People get arrested (and later released) for things that they didn't do all the time.
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Look at Daniken's past. He has been arrested for fraud before.
But was he ever convicted of fraud? People get arrested (and later released) for things that they didn't do all the time.
Yes.
In November 1968 von Däniken was arrested for fraud, after falsifying hotel records and credit references in order to take out loans[8] for $130,000 over a period of twelve years. He used the money for foreign travel to research his book.[6] Two years later,[8] von Däniken was convicted for "repeated and sustained" embezzlement, fraud and forgery, with the court ruling that the writer had been living a "playboy" lifestyle.[4] Von Däniken entered a plea for nullity on the grounds that his intentions were not malicious and the credit institutions were at fault for failing to adequately research his references.[4][6][8] Von Däniken was sentenced on 13 February 1970 to three and a half years imprisonment and fined 3,000 francs.[8][10] He served one year of this sentence before being released.[6][11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken
He wrote his second book while in prison. I doubt he could do any real thorough research that way.
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Whatever one may think of von Daniken's work, I expect most of the research for the 2nd book was done by the time the wheels of the Swiss justice system were able to churn out his arrest & coviction.
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Whatever one may think of von Daniken's work, I expect most of the research for the 2nd book was done by the time the wheels of the Swiss justice system were able to churn out his arrest & coviction.
Stop. I can't do this. You think way too highly of this terrible fraud who has completely poisoned so many minds about ancient history. He is an utter disgrace.
You claim to be a historian but I can't believe any historian would read that garbage and take any of it seriously.
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Actually, the more I am reading of his work, the more I am inclined to agree with you. He is a VERY sloppy individual. I think Carl Sagan may have been right about him. Although paleo-contact is a possibility, and Sagan acknowledges that it is, he still believes that von Daniken is sloppy at best, and downright dishonest at worst. I am beginning to agree.
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Actually, the more I am reading of his work, the more I am inclined to agree with you. He is a VERY sloppy individual. I think Carl Sagan may have been right about him. Although paleo-contact is a possibility, and Sagan acknowledges that it is, he still believes that von Daniken is sloppy at best, and downright dishonest at worst. I am beginning to agree.
Praise god.
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I am currently reading 'Twilight of the Gods', copyright 2010. Von Daniken's skills as a researcher have improved considerably from 1968 when he wrote 'Chariots of the Gods?' using someone else's money. He @ least asks the right questions. Whether his proposed answers are right, I can't say. How did Puma Punku get built, though? It would have been damned hard for our Stone Age friends to have done it! The gigantic stone blocks are precision cut from diorite, hardness 8 (diamond is 10). There have been no tools found around the site that have come anywhere near that hardness. The precision engraving & cutting would require extensive architectural planning, which techniques didn't exist in the Stone Age. Aside from hardness, precision tools would be needed that can only be found in advanced shops today, & certainly were not available then! So who built Puma Punku? I haven't yet gotten to von Daniken's answer. That part ought to be VERY interesting!
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The biggest problem here is that he asks questions without knowing about ancient cultures. They would certainly surprise you with their ingenuity.
Just saying "they didn't have those techniques" is easy when you don't know anything about them. Obviously, they did have the techniques as aliens have very likely never visited Earth. But we have a lot of missing holes in our knowledge of ancient cultures and lazy people rather say it was aliens then research or dig for themselves.
Just because you don't know the answer doesn't mean it's not a logical, down to earth answer. And for fuck's sake, stop underestimating ancient culture. They were more advanced than you think before the terrible dark ages destroyed their knowledge and started from scratch.
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The only difficulty w/ 'the terrible Dark Ages' argument is 2 fold. 1. Its largely a Protestant invention to make the Catholic Church look bad. 2. It applies only to Europe. Puma Punku is not only in S. America, it is pre-Inca in origin (Aymara, to be precise). Even among the Inca, a post-Stone Age people, its creation by their predecessors the Aymara (most definitely a Stone Age people) was as puzzling to them as it is to us. In fact, the Inca & the Aymara believed that Puma Punku had been made in 1 night by the gods headed by Viracocha. It was today's archaeologists who assigned its building to the Aymara. So who built it? The Aymara, who never claimed to? Or someone else? I'm not saying it was aliens. I'm just saying its a fair question. & why isn't it likely that aliens ever visited Earth? Just because WE don't yet possess the tech for interstellar travel doesn't mean someone doesn't! Its a bit arrogant to use our own advancement as a measuring stick to judge the potential for advancement elsewhere in
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the cosmos. Hell, I'm not saying aliens exist, although I believe they do. I don't know that they would care about Earth if they did, but they might. Who knows who 'the gods' are? I don't! Von Daniken might be right about Puma Punku. He might be full of shit. But no Stone Age people with flint tools built that place! Maybe there were radically advanced cultures on Earth (like Atlantis or something). Maybe it was aliens. I've got no idea. But @ least he is asking. He has the cajones for that. He deserves credit for that @ least.
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Atlantis? ... omg. I can't.
South American civilizations are difficult to analyze because the Earth has reclaimed so much of the evidence.
HE DOESN'T DESERVE CREDIT FOR SHIT. You should realize as a historian that people HAVE been asking these questions. Daniken isn't the first to be asking these questions, he's just the first asshole to mass market the aliens tampering with history theory and build a fucking theme park off the idea. If the evidence is gone then it's gone, that doesn't mean fucking aliens built that shit.
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I don't even know for certain how to respond to such an answer, or rather, non-answer. I didn't say I was sure it was aliens. I have no idea. But the Inca, and the people before them, the Aymara, certainly did not believe that the Aymara built Puma Punku and the nearby Tiwanaku. In fact, both people believe that both places were built by the gods in one night. The question we should be asking is not how the Aymara built the place, since they denied building it at all. The question we should be asking is, who the Hell were "the gods" that did build the place? Von Daniken has given us his answer. I am NOT saying that his is the right answer (although I am not certain what his answer is exactly; I have to finish reading the book first). I have no answer at present. But saying the Aymara did it, when they expressly denied doing it, and the natives living in the region (who still speak Aymara and Quechua) STILL deny doing it, and the Inca denied doing it, and everyone who lived there before the Spanish got there, and since then as well, denied doing it and still do, is an incredibly stupid thing to do, and what's worse is a copout. That is the real laziness. We don't know who did it, so lets just say that whoever lived there before there was writing did it. It doesn't matter that they denied doing it, and that the people who followed them and did have writing also denied that they did it (or that they themselves did it). It doesn't matter that both groups have the same story that the gods did it in one night. No, lets assign it to a Stone Age people who possessed none of the wherewithal or tools to do it, and expressly denied doing it! That makes all kinds of sense!
Who were 'the gods'? We don't know, do we? A lot of people in the world have stories of the gods doing this, or that, or the other. Particularly do the gods like to build things. Very large things, that get built that would be difficult or impossible for people nowadays to build, let alone ancient peoples to build. So, the question we should ask ourselves is namely, who are these gods? Von Daniken says they are aliens? Is he right? I don't know. I do not claim that he is. He may be full of shit. He damn sure better have proof if he claims that. So far I have not seen him present any proof that would stand up in a court. But no one else seems to have an answer. So who were the gods? Maybe they were other, more advanced cultures. I used Atlantis as an example. Plato spoke of it. Does that mean it existed? Not necessarily. Does that mean it didn't? Not necessarily.
I'm willing to investigate the question of who the gods were. The reason I am willing is because I find it hard to believe that places like Puma Punku were built by people who couldn't believe themselves that they had built them! If a group of people say, "we didn't do that", who am I to say, "no, you are wrong, you did!". That is a little arrogant, no? So, if they say the gods did it, then I want to know who the gods were. Especially since there are MANY cultures that say that the gods have done many things, including building very large things that would be hard to build otherwise. And I will give someone like Von Daniken a read, just for having the balls to ask the question along with me, even if I disagree with his answer (and I don't know if I do or not).
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How do you know that Puma Punku couldn't have been built by ancient humans?
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How do you know that Puma Punku couldn't have been built by ancient humans?
Because the gods did it obvi. If ancient people who didn't build it claim it was the gods then it must have been gods.
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Gary, Greeting:
That is entirely possible. There may have been an advanced culture that existed at some ancient time. I used Atlantis as an example, simply because that's one that everyone has heard of. Obviously if they were in South America they wouldn't be Atlantians per se. But could there have been ancient cultures that existed at some point before our recorded cultures did? VERY possibly.
"There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. They may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive far, far away, amongst the stars."
Those of you who are old enough may recognise that passage from the 1978-1980 Battlestar Galactica theme. I certainly consider the premise at least a possibility. Von Daniken, in my opinion, has essentially written at length on that theme. He simply has taken the sci-fi element out of it and turned it into what he considers serious science. The rest of us may or may not agree with what he has done to it. I don't know for one. I haven't read enough of his work to be able to evaluate it one way or another. I'm reading my 3rd von Daniken book, although I own eight of them now. I shall try to read all 8 of them in the next few weeks. As far as his theme park, given its in Switzerland, that would be hard to visit. I understand he wants to build another but I don't recall where.
But you are right, Gary, Puma Punku, and for that matter, many other places, may have been built by ancient humans. The gods may indeed be humans from ancient cultures, long before our cultures. The Bible speaks of giants. It speaks of the sons of God coming down among the sons of men and taking wives of those whom they chose. And the children were the men of renown. Perhaps these stories were more literal then we knew. We all know the story of David and Goliath. Other cultures also speak of giants. Who knows what came before us many thousands of years ago? What about in antediluvian times? Can we say? No, I don't believe we can. Can we say that Atlantis never existed? That Lemuria was purely a myth? That something like Battlestar Galactica is not possible in some form? What were the gods?
I ask again: What were the gods? Do we know? Can we know? Who has the audacity to say what they were with certainty? Shouldn't we be trying to find out? Rather than taking the lazy way out, shouldn't we be looking for answers, no matter how much they may challenge our comfortable view of the world? Step out, find out! Don't sit there in your armchair and simply vegetate with the answers, or rather, the non-answers, that do not work. Just Puma Punku alone should not satisfy us! The Aymara built it? Please! Even they didn't believe that! And their descendants still don't! What about the other unexplained mysteries of the world? Come on, people! Who were the gods?
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What the fuck are you talking about?
So many of these "mysteries" aren't mysteries. You're the lazy one cause you rather write it off as something we can't understand than figure out how human beings figured these things out.
And no, Lemuria and Atlantis did not ever exist.
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How do you know they did not ever exist? If they never existed, they sure have been in the collective consciousness of the human race for an awful long time! I still want to know how the Aymara built a structure that they themselves denied building! Come now, do tell! Maybe von Daniken is wrong, maybe he is right. Maybe he is partially right and partially wrong. I don't believe that in things this theoretical that anybody has it perfectly correct. How could they? the reason its called pre-history is because there is no written history on the matter. The Aymara had no written language to my knowledge. The Inca did. But the Inca had no idea who built Puma Punku any more than the Aymara did. Both groups said that the gods built it in one night! I don't know what one night means. I don't know who the gods are. I think we need to figure out both things. I think for now we can safely say that a night is what everyone calls a night, namely, about 12 hours of darkness. But who were the gods? Were they aliens? Were they ancient humans? Were they humans along the lines of Battlestar Galactica type humans? I don't know. But I think its high time we started trying to find out, rather than just assigning easy answers to people who themselves reject the answers we are giving!
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Now you're just saying the same thing over and over. Insert a little skepticism into your life. Put down Daniken and pick up some real ancient history or archaeology books.
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It's not that crazy. First of all, it was built from sandstone. Not diorite. Second, there are multiple possible ways it could have been done as a quick glance at the wikipedia article reveals.
Anyway, you're suggesting that a race of highly advanced alien lifeforms capable of warpdrive found the Earth, realized that primitive life existed on it, took the unbelievable amount of energy required to get here, built a bunch of simple monuments using available materials, and were never seen again? Is it not more likely that an ancient civilization performed an impressive feat of engineering using slave labor?
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Maybe not even slave labor since the idea that pyramids were built by slaves was debunked.
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That is entirely possible. There may have been an advanced culture that existed at some ancient time. I used Atlantis as an example, simply because that's one that everyone has heard of. Obviously if they were in South America they wouldn't be Atlantians per se. But could there have been ancient cultures that existed at some point before our recorded cultures did? VERY possibly.
I'm talking about ancient people with ancient technology. How do you know that a culture similar to the Incans could not have built Tiwanaku?
Here are some examples of humans recreating some possible methods these cultures could have used.
http://interactive.archaeology.org/tiwanaku/project/experiment.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCvx5gSnfW4
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Having read the Wikipedia article AND the von Daniken text, there is no disagreement. Here is a relevant portion from von Daniken. "This Puma Punku and neighboring Tiwanaku are a panorama of another culture. Mighty blocks of andesite and diorite (a gray-green plutonic rock that is incredibly hard and resistant to weathering) are strewn around. There is absolutely no granite there. The monoliths have been worked with such a precision, honed and polished as if they had been created in a workshop equipped with modern tools such as stainless steel milling machines and diamond-tipped drills. Exquisitely precise channels, around a quarter of an inch wide and roughly a third of an inch deep, cut at right angles-something that simply would not be possible with Stone Age tools, run over the diorite monoliths. (See image 1.6 on page 48.) Nothing here fits in with the image of a primitive Stone Age culture. Puma Punku was witness to some impressive high-tech- and that can be proved."'
It appears that sandstone, diorite, and andesite were all used to construct Puma Punku. Von Daniken quotes Max Uhle and Alphons Stubel who wrote in 1892 the magisterial work, "The Ruins of Tiahuanaco in the Highlands of Ancient Peru".
"The types of andesite worked here display such a degree of hardness and durability that we must surely categorize them as some of the most difficult of all to work.... Bearing in mind the characteristics of the majority of the worked material, we are faced with not only an architectural but also a technical problem here at the site of the ruins. It would seem that the quality of the work here is out of all proportion to the technical means available to the ancient Peruvians."
Von Daniken continues: "These sentences come from Alphons Stubel, a geologist by trade and an expert who-we can be fairly sure-was well acquainted with the degree of hardness of the stones."
EDIT: Von Daniken does acknowledge that there are some figures and blocks at Puma Punku made of sandstone. I did not include that in my messages because it did not seem relevant to my point.
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There has been a great deal more archaeological research done since 1892. Much of it has been experimental, reproducing ancient construction methods using only the tools and knowledge available to those cultures. This is because most of those methods have been discovered at or near those sites. The people who built Tiwanaku lefts lots and lots and lots of evidence of how they did it. Like, for real a lot.
http://davidpratt.info/andes2.htm
http://www.michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/Who%20Taught%20the%20Inca%20Stonemasons%20Their%20Skills%20A%20Comparison%20of%20Tiahuanaco%20and%20Inca%20Cut-Stone%20Masonry.pdf
If you search a library or electronic journal index, you'll find more material on the subject than one person can reasonably handle.
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Well, I can hardly read 22 close-written pages quickly, but I shall take the time to read them later. Probably tomorrow. Nevertheless, I fail to see the point entirely. Sandstone can be carved relatively easily, this I shall grant. Diorite is an entirely different matter however. And no matter what the thing is made of, you still have the point that the Inca and the Aymara BOTH deny making it, and claim it was made "by the gods", whatever that means.
Who were the gods? If the Inca didn't make it, and the Aymara didn't make it, then who the Hell did? Who existed there before the Aymara? I don't know. Does anybody here know? Von Daniken doesn't. The Puma Punku site dates to 600 CE according to Wikipedia. But who were the gods? Even assuming you can move heavy blocks, is it possible to move that damned many of them? And how long would it take? Wikipedia also notes that Puma Punku was abandoned before it was finished. Why? Or is that the case? Nevertheless, who were the gods?
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Why should it be difficult for aliens to get to Earth if they wanted to? I believe that von Daniken's theory has nothing to do w/ 'little green men' as such, but rather, w/ beings who were able to copulate w/ human females, thus producing a new race. Personally, I'm not partial to this theory. I'm more the Battlestar Galactica theory, ie, the concept that humans as such originated off-world, & may exist elsewhere as well as here. If that were the case, it would damn sure explain how a lot of shit got built that frankly has no earthly fucking business being where it is, Puma Punku being just 1 example. Of course, I may be full of crap, too. If I am, I'm prepared to live w/ that. All I'm suggesting is that von Daniken would probably do well to read an archaeology book or 2, & a few history books, & the historians/archaeologists could read 1 or 2 of his.
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Why should it be difficult for aliens to get to Earth if they wanted to? I believe that von Daniken's theory has nothing to do w/ 'little green men' as such, but rather, w/ beings who were able to copulate w/ human females, thus producing a new race. Personally, I'm not partial to this theory. I'm more the Battlestar Galactica theory, ie, the concept that humans as such originated off-world, & may exist elsewhere as well as here. If that were the case, it would damn sure explain how a lot of shit got built that frankly has no earthly fucking business being where it is, Puma Punku being just 1 example. Of course, I may be full of crap, too. If I am, I'm prepared to live w/ that. All I'm suggesting is that von Daniken would probably do well to read an archaeology book or 2, & a few history books, & the historians/archaeologists could read 1 or 2 of his.
The closest star, proxima centauri, is 4 light years away. Even if there were life somewhere in this star system (and there almost certainly is not), it would take them a decade moving at half the speed of light to get here. It's not really realistic to expect them to move more quickly than this, as hitting a single hydrogen atom at .9c would be enough to blow up your space ship. So they spent a decade getting here, braving radiation etc. to... build simple structures and mate with human females? That doesn't make very much sense.
In addition, biology doesn't work like that. Aliens and humans wouldn't be able to produce viable offspring. It doesn't work like that.
In addition again, if you claim that humans started somewhere else, how do you explain the 98% similarity between human and ape DNA? How do you explain the clear lineage of fossils leading up to humanity?
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If that were the case, it would damn sure explain how a lot of shit got built that frankly has no earthly fucking business being where it is, Puma Punku being just 1 example.
What? How do you make that judgment? Does the Statue of Liberty have any business being where it is? Does the Eiffel Tower have any business being where it is? What about all the useless monuments or any artwork for that matter? How dare humans build these things!
If you mean that it doesn't make sense to you then that's an entirely different matter.
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In the middle of something. Will respond later.
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I think if aliens visited Earth in the past, it wasn't to build monuments or mate with humans, but to obtain resources. How they got here would be a mystery, but scientists are theorizing ways in which interstellar travel could be achieved, the most recent I've heard of involves forming a bubble of what they call negative energy around the ship which would essentially compress time-space in front of the ship. The comparison they use is that it would be like having to travel the diameter of a pizza, but you get to cut out a strip of pizza perpendicular to the diameter. The problem with such a method is the immense amount of energy required to create a bubble of negative energy. Nobody is sure how that would be achieved.
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I freely acknowledge that I have no answer at all for the fact that 98% of our DNA is in fact shared with the chimpanzee, although this is not the case with other apes. Regarding space travel, I assume that anyone that could get to Earth would have mastered FTL (faster-than-light) travel. Just because we can't do it doesn't mean they can't. And God knows, the concept has existed for quite awhile. As far as humans and aliens mating, on that I have no answer. Granted, what happens on Star Trek (Spock, for example) may not work in reality, and if it did, it might take some hella tweaking of scientific laws the which I don't even BEGIN to understand. Even in Star Trek, creating Spock took some messing around with DNA to make it work. It wasn't a simple "lets have sex and reproduce". I assume that if aliens came in the distant past and mated with human females, they probably had the kind of mind-blowing technology to mess with the DNA to do exactly that.
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You know how I know that this thread is a complete farce? Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek have been referenced more than once.
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Lets be fair. Something had to be thought of before it could exist. Communicators become cell phones. Yesterday's sci-fi, today's reality. Obviously, not all of it. But FTL travel had to be conceived before it could be theorised about. Sci-fi is where that shit gets conceived. Then some brilliant f----r gets hold of the conception & turns it into a reality. Right now, I can call almost any phone in the world (except N. Korea) from a device the size of my palm, & mine isn't even a smartphone! My laptop can hold the entire Library of Alexandria & then some in its memory banks! Why couldn't humans & aliens interbreed, given sufficient tech? I only brought up Star Trek & BSG concepts because most readers are familiar w/ them. It works as a good starting point. Hell, speaking of portable info gatherers (NOT storers), my NDS has a simple Opera web browser. I can check my bank statement from a device on which I play video games! What won't we achieve next? & who is to say aliens didn't have all this tech in time to
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visit the Earth & do God only knows what, like carving in andesite or tweaking DNA such that a better offspring from an alien/human mating could occur? I don't claim either way. I've never seen such a being, though the Bible says that they did exist. They were called the men of renown, the men of old. Nephilim are also mentioned. & giants certainly populate the Hebrew Bible throughout.
EDIT (From the computer, the earlier part and the message before it were from my phone):
I've done some more research on Erich von Daniken, and some more reading of his book, "Twilight of the Gods". He asks good questions. Some things are not explained well, but his answers are in many cases just outright absurd. At this point, I don't know what to think.
A lot of what he writes is non sequitur. For example, he takes the Great Sphinx, and other sphinges (yes, that is the correct plural of "sphinx"), and comes up with the idea that because they exist in art, they must have existed in reality. I mean, I won't dispute, its possible. But with our current knowledge of genetics, its highly unlikely. Taking the genetics of a human and a lion and producing an actual half-Human half-Lion Sphinx seems a bit far-fetched. And that doesn't even begin to speak of all the other sphinges that there are. Half-Bird, half-Goat, half-Dog, half-Ram, etc, etc.
And what would be the point? I mean granted, some have asked the same question of why one would create a half-Lion and half-Tiger (a Liger), and these actually DO exist. I don't know the answer to that. Is there a purpose to creating such a beast? A half-Ass and half-Horse Mule obviously serves a purpose, in that they are hardy little beasts, but does a Liger serve a point, or was it just done to see if it could be?
If it were possible to make a Sphinx, would there be a point, or would some advanced alien do this just for fun? Its one thing for humans to make a Liger. We didn't have to travel halfway across the Galaxy to do it! Why would aliens travel halfway across the cosmos, stop here, and then create a Sphinx? Why, for that matter, would they mate with proto-humans (if that were possible), thus creating Homo sapiens)? Again, what would be the point?
So, although he does ask interesting questions, like, how the Hell was Puma Punku built (I for one don't believe the standard answer), I am not at all sure I accept his answers either.